« Walking and more walking | Main | Salisbury »
March 26, 2007
Holiday begins
Saturday - This is Scott's first and only official vacation day in London. We have done a few things during the week, but this is the day to squeeze everything else in. So today we did a "Westminster Walk" (as recommended by our travel book) in included, Westminster Bridge, Big Ben and Parliament, Westminster Abby, # 10 Downing St., Horse Guards Station, Old Scotland yard building, Trafalgar Sq. Found a great place for lunch (they had 2 meals for 8 pounds) Walked over to the National Gallery Museum. On the way we passed the pigeons of Trafalgar Sq. Chanler had a BALL - he LOVED chasing the birdies all over! The national gallery was cool, but Scott and I both think we are not much of painting museum people. Next we went to the Tower of London. Saw the crown jewels, Amory, yeoman warders/beef-eaters etc. Also cool, but not sure it was worth the cost. We were going to go to a different restaurant in the same chain as we went to lunch for dinner, but we discovered that they won't allow children after 6 pm (last order by 5pm) WHAT THE HELL! So we again searched all over for a restaurant - ended up in an Italian place near. As we were being seated Chanler piped up "I want Pizza" very loudly. So we got him pizza and he proceeded to eat 3/4 of it by himself (this was not a individual pizza size like you would normally think of - it was the size of an entire plate 8-10 inches at least, but very thin crust)
Sunday - We made it to Buckingham Palace today to see the Changing of the guard. Let me just say - it is NOT worth it to do this if you have a 2 year old with you. It is an interesting ceremony (albeit a long one with not much understandable at times), but a 2 year old has no patience for any of it. Chanler did like the band and music, but that didn't hold his attention for long enough. We had to move away from the gates about 3/4 of the way through and go check out the police horses and pigeons - that was the only way we made it to the end of the ceremony. The funniest thing was that we ended up in a "pocket" of Americans and each of us were glad to meet a "friendly" face. I was just so nice to not have to deal withe the accent and to be able to heckle things without offending some local.
Checked out of the tiny B&B and headed to the train station for a train to Salisbury.
What a beautiful ride! green hills, trees, animals, etc
Got to Salisbury and walked to our new B&B. What we didn't realize it that is was over a mile and up a hill. We also didn't go the best way and actually ended up going up and down and up the hill. We were pooped when we finally arrived. But WOW what a difference it is not being in London. This place it AMAZING. The room is huge and lovely! and it includes a full English breakfast (unlike the fruit basket and cereal bars at the last place) I don't really want to leave the room. 1) because it is so nice and 2) because it seems far from the center of town. Oh well we have to leave to eat sometime.
And we did leave to get dinner. As we were going down the stairs, Chanler was having trouble walking (didn't have his sea legs kind of trouble - Maybe it was the ride in the carrier to the place that cut off his circulation or something). He figured this out and decided to go down the stairs backwards ( the safest way), but still managed to "miss" the last step and fall face first into the wooden corner of the baniser with a huge crash. He now has a huge lum on his forehead and two gashes on his tongue where he bit it when he fell. Poor baby.
Posted by Jesse at March 26, 2007 2:04 PM