Hmm...so it's the middle of the night again, but this is less about insomnia and more about a Really Scary Dream in which thugs broke into a house in which I was staying with some friends, and I had to try to protect Zoe, who was sleeping upstairs.
I'm sure that's an easy analysis for anyone with a background in Freshman Psych courses, but whatever. It was scary enough while I was in the dream that my heart is still pounding...THUMP THUMP THUMP...not fun.
And now I am awake, trying to shake of the freaked-out-ness of a nightmare, so I thought it was the perfect time to contemplate Day 3 of my Big Trip.
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So...I was in London only once before this trip, back when I was 19 years old. It was May and I only had about four days (sound familiar??), and back then, the big highlight of the trip was the day that the sun came out and it hit 80 degrees F, and I spent the day walking through Hyde Park.
Today, it was maybe about 40 degrees F, and the sun tried real hard to come out for about 10 minutes, and Daniel and I spent a bit of the day walking through Hyde Park...and it was again (still?) a highlight of the trip for me.
We got on the road early today, hopping on the underground to get up to the Victoria & Albert museum, which I LOVED. Lots of old artifacts, a cool design room, and this gallery filled with plaster renditions of huge world monuments that people created hundreds of years ago by making plaster casts and dragging them back to London so that even the poor people could see the amazing sights of the world. It was really impressive. While there, we had tea in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the museum cafe. Mmm...jasmine green tea and a scone with clotted cream and jam? Reasonably Proper British Tea? Check!
After the museum, we headed to Hyde Park, which we were just supposed to briefly touch on our walk towards Buckingham Palace, which I had never seen. But then we got the idea to look for the Peter Pan statue, as Zoe is currently obsessed with Peter Pan and I wanted to get a picture for her. A couple miles and LOTS of bird photos later, we found him and turned around to retrace our steps.
And a word about the birds...seriously, London parks have the most impressive collection of semi-domesticated waterfowl that I have ever seen. Many flavors of ducks, swans, geese and gulls literally FILL their lakes, and where in the States, feeding birds in parks frequently feels discouraged, here there are designated areas to feed the birds (tuppence a bag....wait, I'm singing in my head again!! Mary Poppins!!! ). Some of them are so tame that they walk right up to people, literally begging for food like a dog. And I even saw a squirrel who was so used to being fed by humans that it was taking food from an old woman's hand! It was really fun to watch, all of it, even for me, the girl with the bird phobia.
We walked for miles and miles, it seemed, and skirted some big tourist/important sites like the Palace (from which we kept our distance, due to the huge groups of people surrounding it), Trafalgar's Square, and Picadilly Circus. We made it to SoHo for some shopping, even going to Hamley's Toy Store (London's FAO Schwartz) which was SO PACKED that it was UTTERLY TERRIFYING. We left quickly.
Some of the smaller shops were much more fun, and we kept on walking and walking until we needed to have a drink in a proper British pub. Yum! I even had a beer, which is a rarity for me (I love my red wine, but you probably already knew that). It was a nice break, but then we had to walk some more to find the underground station that would take us to a restaurant for dinner.
Dinner was fun. My super-cool mother-in-law had requested that we go out to dinner "on her" one night, so tonight's dinner was sponsored by the lovely Nana. We went to a Brazilian restaurant which featured meat, meat and more meat. DELICIOUS!!! That plus a shared bottle of wine and my cheeks were PINK by the time we left.
We stumbled home (less from drink than from the utter exhaustion from walking for 10 hours), and both of us crashed within an hour. Not a bad way to spend a day, no?
I have no new observations about Londoners, other than to say that I can't keep straight from which direction cars are flying down the road at all times. Luckily, being a tourist town, the London infrastructure at some point added "look left" and "look right" signs on street crosswalks for confused travelers like me. Of course, being me, even this confuses me (I am notoriously bad at knowing my right from my left), so they've kindly added arrows as well. Thank you, British Government! You saved my life at least once today.
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Meanwhile, back at the ranch...Zoe's behavior was apparently less than stellar today, but still, they are surviving without me. We had a nice, long chat this evening, which I totally needed after being cut off from them all day. I miss having a working cell phone...
They will go back to work and school tomorrow, and I imagine the return to routine will help give them each a breather. So that's good.
But ugh, I miss them so much. Skype/Google Video Chat have been lifesavers - I can't imagine how I'd feel if I hadn't been able to physically see them every day!!!! On one hand, I'm still having an amazing time, but on the other hand, I can't wait to be with them again. But you know me - I always feel conflicted about something, right?
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