London

After graduation we headed back to London for a couple of days of exploring.  My Father-in-Law (FIL)has never been outside the US, and my Mother-in-Law (MIL) has only been to Europe once, and that trip was only to Ireland, so everything we did for the remainder of the trip was brand new to both of them.  First we walked through the University of London campus, which hubby was looking forward to as he is thinking of applying there for Post Graduate degree and wanted to see what it was like.  This was on the way to the British Museum, which is what the rest of us were looking forward to.  I knew that this is where they had King Tut, so I would have been excited even if we hadn't recently seen the second Night at the Museum movie, which took place here.  I tried to find the things I had seen in the movie, but we were too tired to cover much area and the only thing I saw was this guy.  Still exciting.

I didn't get to see King Tut because he was on loan to another museum, but they did have lots of other mummies.  This whole display was at the same time extremely morbid and very fascinating.  Most were still wrapped up in their linens, but at least one was partially unwrapped, and it was amazing to see the preservation, you could even see hair!  They also showed x-rays of the wrapped up mummies to give you a glimpse of what was inside.  It’s easy to forget there is an actual person in there until you see the x-ray, especially because many of them were so small!  They were significantly shorter than we are today.  In the end it was a good experience, but hubby and I both agreed that we preferred the British Natural History Museum, which he and I had both seen on previous trips.

The next day we headed out to the Tower of London.  This was much harder than we thought.  First we were confused as to where the Tube (London underground train system) station actually was.  Then we realized we were on the wrong line, then the station for the correction line was closed, then when we finally got to the proper station, we walked all the way to the other side of a huge station before we found out that the line was closed in that segment because of track work.  So a trip that should have had us only walking for a block or two and should have taken about 20 minutes took closer to an hour and we were worn out and frustrated by the time we got there.  Not a good way to start out.  But finally we arrived!

Hubby and I had both been there before, but he hadn’t taken the Yeoman’s tour and missed out on the chapel and all the storytelling.  If you go, defiantly do the free Yeoman’s tour.  After the Tower we stumbled across the oldest church in the City of London and FIL had the sole attention of one of the docents, so we stayed a while there while she told him much of the history of the church and London.

After that church, the only site I wanted to see, St. Paul’s chapel, was closed.  So we settled for heading back towards the hotel.  Hubby, MIL, and I went to the Bree Louise Public House, which hubby had found on Yelp the day before.  It is known for its cask ales, ciders, and pot-pies.  We tried some of each. :)  We ended up making friends with the couple at the table next to us and talked for hours.  At some point FIL joined us for dinner and joined in the conversations.  Eventually I could hardly talk because I was losing my voice trying to talk over the raucous crowd, and we headed to bed.

The next day was the start of our speedy train journey to Italy!