Today started with a ride on The London Eye; a ginormous ferris wheel type thing with incomparable views of the city. SInce it was a rare sunny day there were a ton of other people riding it too so the lines were a little long. Kind of getting used to that though… Anyway, the ‘eyes’ are a glass pods that hold about 20 people and there are about 30 pods on the wheel. All it takes about 30 minutes to do a full rotation. The heights are not for the faint-hearted but we are brave. From the Eye on the south bank we walked all the way to Buckingham Palace and just happened upon the last moments of the changing of the gaurd. We got to see HRH’s marching band. Sweet. Then we walked on down to Trafalgar Square where un- fortunately the Admiral Lord Nelson is hidden by scaffolding. We ate our very first Pastie a delicious puff pastry stuffed with some kind of meat( it was advertised as beef but we were skeptical as neither of us has seen beef in that particular shade of gray)potatoes & carrots. yum. washed it down with a Coke (made wih real sugar -not high fructose corn syrup,mom!)and for under 6 we had a filling and traditional lunch! Popped into the National Gallery to see artworks by all of the Ninja Turtles and then it was more walking to The Towerof London and Tower Bridge. Lots of touristy stuff today, but sometimes you gotta check that stuff out. About 2 hours ago, we sat down for a coffee and realized that we had no idea how we were getting to Scotland tomorrow and got practical. After pricing out two roundtrip train tickets and vetoing a ten hour bus ride we checked with a rental car agency. Since it’s about 200 dollars cheaper to rent a car for 5 days than it is for the train tickets we are renting a car. A Ford Fiesta to be precise. Now for those of you familiar we CR’s horrible driving, just relax. Ryan will be driving as he knows how to drive a stick. He’s terrified of getting us out of London considering that both the steering wheel and traffic flow will be on the WRONG side of the road. No worries though, his technique will be to pretend that he is looking in a mirror. Rest easy mothers. We’ll call you when we get there. It’s about 400 miles to Edinburgh from London. We’re in for an adventure within the adventure on this one! We’ll cruise into Scotland and then circle back down to London via the west coast. And if worse comes to worse we can sleep in the car as we are heading out of the City with everyone else in the UK as its a Bank Holiday this weekend and of course, we have no accomodation booked! Yes, even after months of planning, there are somethings that we missed. We have Weds night booked in Edinburgh but then we’re leaving it to chance… Saturday night we’ll be back in London staying with CR’s friend, Craig until we catch the Ferry to The Netherlands. It’s been a long day and our dogs are barking. We are in love. In love with each other, in love with London, in love with being out here in the world without a net. Everyone should be so lucky. love to all of you, keep the comments coming, it’s great to hear from all of you!
Posted from UK:
posted Tuesday May 2006