London Calling!

Beefeater picture!

Our last adventure and second trip to London with my (Dakota's) family was great. We started the day getting on to a cheap Megabus (great company with inexpensive tickets) really early in the morning and we were to London in 2 hours... Sadly traffic was so bad that it took us another two to get to the bus station once we were in London! We couldn't stand it, we were literally within 15 minute walking distance of the sites we wanted to visit but we couldn't get off the bus! When we finally did reach the bus station we hurried to the London Underground station and got a day pass. Mom was horrified of riding on the tube and her eyes were extremely wide as we flew through the tunnels beneath London. It didn't help mom's nerves either that the lights on the subway flickered on and off a lot. We realized that they did this when we came to stops so it wasn't quite as nerve racking after that. We arrived at the Tower of London and found ourselves queuing (fancy word for standing in line) forever! So if you go to the Tower be absolutely sure to pre-purchase tickets (which cost a fortune)!  

After another half hour of waiting in line we finally got our tickets and headed into the tower. We waited to go on a tour guided by a Yeoman Warder, better known as a beefeater. It was enjoyable having him guide us around and tell stories about people being tortured and executed, and it would have been even better if there wasn't a crowd of a hundred people doing just the same! He was an enjoyable fellow though and we had our picture taken with him later when our tour was over. We proceeded to go through the White Tower which was turned into a museum housing weapons and armor of the kings and the country through history. It was a very interesting museum, but once again would have been more so if there weren't so many people crowded into it. We moved on from the White Tower to the Crown Jewels, which were quite spectacular. Those gems are more radiant than anything you have ever seen. The best part was as we were leaving the display there was a donation box, which had tons of money in it. It was like saying now that you have seen all of our priceless gems and gold, give us some money to keep them! Overall, it was cool to see but much too busy and expensive.

 We left the Tower of London and moved on to another tower, the Monument (what a creative name). We all enjoyed going up all 311 spiral steps of the tower and were quite dizzy when we reached the top, which gave a spectacular view of London. Jed especially enjoyed climbing the tower. I think one of his favorite things while he was here was climbing up spiral staircases! When we came back down at the bottom we even got special certificates saying that we had climbed it. Harper and I plan on having my artistic brother, Jasper, write our names in calligraphy on our certificates.

       

     From the Monument we took the Underground to the Museum of Natural History, mom was a lot calmer this time and there was space for us to use seats which was much nicer. We got inside of the Museum of Natural History and there was hardly anybody there so we were able to walk right into the Dinosaur exhibit. Jed really liked the giant animatronic T-Rex and I'm not sure who wouldn't -it is awesome! We headed back to the bus and boarded for our trip home. However the trip was quite sketchy, the driver kept swerving back and forth and driving over the rumble strips for long periods of time. If that wasn't enough the microphone was broken so it kept turning on making loud noises as we rode home. We had an enjoyable time in London, even if it was a little busy and strange... but we were quite relieved to arrive safely back in Bristol!