This time we only went a short way, past Hyde Park, the Aston Martin dealer, Buckingham Palace, and decided to jump off at the Victoria and Albert Museum, one of the multiple HUGE museums here, all of which are free to the public.
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| The Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Greek room with art class present |
We went in, looked as some of the art encompassing a wide ranging collection from ancient to fairly recent. I took some pictures but didn't feel like really exploring the entire museum as it is too vast and this visit was just a preliminary foray so we left after only a half hour and walked the couple of blocks to the even more famous Museum of Natural History.
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| Sidewalk view of Natural History Museum |
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| Museum main entrance |
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| The vast lobby |
We had to cue up for a few minutes but got in fairly quickly to the Grand Hall, five stories or more tall, with a giant dinosaur skeleton standing in the middle. Then we made a fateful choice; to follow a line of people headed into the dinosaur exhibit. Suddenly we found ourselves on a metal catwalk above the actual exhibit, along with what looked like a MILLION other people, mostly parents with lots of children!
As we slowly inched our way over the various exhibits, it grew hotter and more crowded. Before long I was feeling near panic and pressed from all sides with no way out. I was very hot and still wore my full jacket and coat with no way to take them off. I lost all interest in the dinosaurs and Evie realized that I was not doing so well and guided me through the crowds, often side stepping and edging around and through the masses to get to the end of the catwalk, then walked down to the main floor, past a huge animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex and then through a maze like series of exhibits in order to find the exit! That was no fun!
After that disaster, we headed to the coffee shop with big windows; thank goodness for open spaces! It overlooked a large courtyard dedicated to Charles Darwin. Evie had tea at the little cafe and we then visited a couple of more exhibits before deciding that was quite enough and exited the museum without really exploring more and doing our visit there justice.
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| Darwin's terrace with new addition to museum |
We then took a tube ride for the first time, using the Oyster pass that we purchased; the all-events transportation pass (30 pounds each for a week) and went out directly to the northern extension of the bus tour, a pair of giant train stations.
The first one was St. Pancras (prounounced Sin Pancras; Brits never say SAINT as in St. Louis, it's always an abbreviated "sn" sound) and the other, close but going a different direction, called King's Cross. I love going into these stations, we have nothing like them in the West, huge covered series of platforms, enough for 15 or more trains at one time, with cafe's and stores all about.
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| St. Pancras station |
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| Sculpture in St. Pancras station |
We walked across the street to the other station with a large, airy modern atrium added on the side and a display of blue lights covering the entire ceiling. My camera battery gave out at this point, since I had failed to plug it in the night before! Taught me a valuable lesson for the rest of the trip; just like your phone and tablet, must get juice every night without fail! But, with the help of the internet, I can still show you what the station (at our visit, obscured by construction fences) and the new concourse at the side look like.
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| King's Cross station from St. Pancras station (artist's rendering, small tube station in front was under construction during our visit) |
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| The new glass and steel ceiling of the concourse beside the rail station of King's Cross (photo from web) |
We had a nice little lunch at King's Cross (sometimes seen without apostrophe), then walked out directly to the bus stop and, after a short wait, boarded the next tour bus. We got a front row seat upstairs since it was completely empty when we started at the northern end. This leg of the Big Bus tour was not that popular, at least on this day. We wound our way back towards the center of town, past numerous landmarks, Bloomsbury, Russell Square, Baker Street and some which I've already forgotten.
When we reached the end of the line, near the Embankment (close to the river Thames), we walked through Covent Garden (large area with market stalls on the weekend), by Ytafalgar Square (filled to the brim with Irish St. Patrick's Day revelers; no desire to enter that mess), to the hospital where Evie gave birth to her daughter near Charing Cross and then into the tube station. Sharmaine, it turns out is a true Cockney born within the sounds of Bow Bells, a tiny church in The East End of London, a mile away. It took one transfer to get to the line that went by our hotel but you never seem to have to wait more than a couple of minutes for a train to come. By the time we made our way back to our room, we were both pretty exhausted so I took a nap and Evie wrote some postcards and kept up her log (that's an old fashioned version of a blog) before we were ready for dinner.
We had made reservations at a nearby Austrian restaurant which had been packed to the brim the night before. It had an accordion player with keyboard accompanist and I wanted to see some live music so that was the destination. We both had a great Schnitzel with terrific bread and a little dessert. Afterwards, I made a little video of the musician playing a request for Evie; he did "Edelweiss" for her.
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| Entertainment at Austrian Restaurant |
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