What I'm glad I packed: my pillow!
If you look at the photo I posted a couple entries back where I'm on the skytrain clutching a lululemon bag, that's my pillow inside it. I sleep on one of those orthopedic foam pillows and it has done so much good for my neck. Without it, I get terrible neck strain & headaches (due to a whiplash injury in a car accident long ago). Even with it I still ocassionally need to take muscle relaxants. I'm so glad I brought my pillow!
What I didn't need to have packed: second pair of runners.
I wore my pair of new Nike Air Max+ 2009 (they re-released them this spring) every.single.day. And I had no problems with my feet, ankles, knees - LOVE these shoes.
What I wish I had packed: silk longjohns, cashmere turtleneck, down parka, toque, scarf, mittens......
Yeah, London whipped my goosebumpy ass. It was cold. The kind of wet miserable cold that all Vancouverites are familiar with: <10C with rain & wind. You know that dreary chilled down to the bones feeling you get if you're not properly bundled up in that sort of weather? I had it.
Amelia had it too. Here she is in the red (lovely coat but nowhere near warm enough for what London served up). This is our first full day in London.
\Then we hopped on the Big Bus double decker tour, which conveniently stopped less than a block away from our hotel. I had booked a 48h ticket online & took advantage of the discount they offer. Above you can just see the bus driving away that we've hopped off. Since as you can see, it's pouring rain, we had been sitting down on the inside & frankly, that kinda sucked. You do still get the tour (recorded in the case of this one; some of the routes have live guides) but it's really hard to see much from the fogged in/rain smeared windows. We stayed on for a bit but our plan for the day was the National Gallery.
This was our first experience with galleries & museums on this trip & we discovered very early on that when you travel as a quad, it slows you down. People all want to see different things, various people stop or slow down (or sit down. Ahem. Roo was a champion sitter.) at things that you might have just walked on by. No matter, the rain was falling & we were warm and dry and content.
I especially liked seeing Gainsborough's Mr & Mrs Andrews. This is a painting about which Sister Wendy said: thank goodness the dog loves him because his wife doesn't. We also checked out the Cezannes and the Monet which was a nice complement to the ones we saw later in Paris. Roo creeped himself out with The Arnolfini Portrait which he finds bizzarely spooky.
I also admired Turner's Fighting Temeraire & Botticelli's Venus & Mars. Roo checked out Van Gogh's Sunflowers. With all of these it was amazingly easy to see the paintings from up close or stroll away for a look from a distance. There were a fair number of people about but never a huge crowd. The paintings are not behind glass and the little rope keeping you back is really very close to the artwork. Bonus for me is that there are LOADS of dogs in British art. I wish I had stopped at their gift shop to see if they had any post cards of some of the paintings with dogs which I had admired. Great gallery & definitely on my list for a return visit.
Satiated with art, we stuck our noses out and started strolling, in no particular direction when we found ourselves in front of....
Oh duh. We're at Downing Street!
Red phone booth! And umbrellas :( Rain is back.
Stopped off for a snack & actually headed back to the hotel for quick wash up & to put on more layers of clothes.
So here we are at Paddington again, Amelia is layered like a little onion underneath that coat & we're off again.
Hey look! I see blue sky over Westminster!
Here's our first somewhat close look at the London Eye. I loved the mooring rings held by the lion heads on this wharf.
This is Westminster Bridge looking towards to bank opposite the London Eye. Does she look warm? Not really, eh.
But since it actually was not raining and there were large patches of blue sky showing, we hopped back on the Big Bus, got our plastic ponchos & this time parked ourselves upstairs. It's SO much nicer upstairs!
Here's Buckingham Palace (kind of from the rear. Or side?) But anyway - see the flag?
That means SHE is home.
Loads of blue sky now & we're enjoying ourselves though it is kind of chilly up there.
This is Hyde Park, specifically the Lion & the Unicorn Gate aka Queen Elizabeth Gate which was installed in 1993 by Her Majesty in honor of the Queen Mum's 93rd Birthday.
It's the Ritz! But sigh, it's raining. AGAIN.
Fortunately by now we had secured the PRIZE seats on the tour bus: upstairs the first few rows have a roof. Great views, the wind is blocked so you're warmer and of course you stay dry.
London tries to make it up for the crap weather by giving us a sunsetty rainbow!
And THAT was pretty much the end of our first full day in London. We rolled off the bus just before it shut down for the evening, crawled home & crashed into bed in our mercifully warm hotel room.
Though first we had to climb up 76 stairs to get to it...... :)
2 comments:
OOps, thought I'd left a comment, but maybe I wasn't concentrating and didn't actually post it.
Anyway, I was going to add that Meredith also had rain the first day in London on her trip last year, but after that the sun shone. I'm hoping it did for you too:)
As the saying goes - you don't go to England for the weather. :-D It looks like you managed to pack in some great sightseeing in spite of the rain & cold. My father laughed at me when I packed tuques and mittens for myself & the kids for an August week in southern Scotland and northeast England a few years back, but we did actually need and use them. Just call me a thin-blooded Vancouverite.
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