We took a lighter pace today because it was Sunday. We got up and headed to the Hyde Park Chapel for Sacrament Meeting at 9 am. I had studied a map, so I generally knew the area, but when we got off, we just followed a group of women dressed up for Church and they looked sort of Mormon, so we just followed them. We arrived a few minutes late, and ended up in the overflow at the side of the chapel where it was difficult to hear because a) they had the volume turned way down, and b) a lot of kids on the hardwood floor made a lot of ambient noise. But it was fun to hear prayers and talks with a strong British accent. (Why is it that a British accent makes things sound so much cooler?)
Becky outside the Hyde Park Chapel
After Sacrament Meeting, we walked up the street to Hyde Park and caught a double-decker bus down to Buckingham Palace so we could watch the Changing of the Guard. As we were walking from the bus stop to the front of the palace, we walked along the side of the Queen's backyard, where they have heavily fortified it. Try getting through that barbed wire!
The Changing of the Guard is kind of anticlimactic....there really isn't much to see, and what you do see, you see from a distance and you can't really tell what they are doing anyway. It was more fun to see one of the Queen's Horseguards march down the street as we were walking to the front of the palace. Much closer, and no one else trying to cram their way in front of us.
We took up a spot at the side of the Palace forecourt (to get a fence-side position, you have to arrive several hours ahead of the changing). This was close enough for us and we were tall enough we could see pretty well. We had to wait maybe 30 min for the ceremony to begin, and as it got closer, it was interesting to see the cultural differences in people and their ideas about what is OK and not. For instance, a family from a European country came just before it started and kind of kept pushing their way in until they had pushed their way almost up to the fence (and managed to push their kids all the way to the fence). We just have such a clear perception of what is "our space" and we would never dream of trying to infringe on other's space. I just thought it was an interesting thing to observe.
Becky lined up in "our spots"
The crowds that finally worked in before it started
What you see of the changing. I thought it was actually more interesting to watch the uniformed FBI-equivalents who stand back and are really guarding the palace and the way they monitor the tourists watching. They were very quick to rush over if anyone started climbing the gates.
From Buckingham Palace, we decided to go back to the hotel, change our clothes, and get something to eat. This is the subway entrance and the escalators down to the trains. Not all of the stations have escalators. How do we know? Because as we got out of a subway later that afternoon, we bypassed the elevator thinking we could just walk up the steps to the street. But at that station, the trains were about 6-7 stories underground and we ended up on a circular (yes, circular) staircase to get out of the station.
Becky in the underground station waiting for the Picadilly line train.
We got back to our hotel, changed, ate, and took a power nap, then headed out to see the City. After walking up the 6-7 underground stories to the street level, we arrived here at Russell Square. And on one side is...."up, up, up past the Russell Hotel..." (From the musical Cats).
And walking through Russell Square, we saw these guys dressed up and dancing and Becky said, "My kind of people!"
Bobbies on patrol outside the British Museum
All of the public museums in London are free, including the British Museum. It was very crowded, but we still got to see almost all of the highlights. The British Library is filled with the spoils of British conquests over the century and is mostly artifacts, stone, sculpture, etc.
What foreign language teacher doesn't need a photo taken next to the Rosetta Stone?!?
The Winged Lions from Assyria.
The Eqyptian Room
The Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon. The museum doesn't call them the Elgin marbles any more (after the British commander who took them from Greece.) They are in a spat with Greece who wants them back and the British say no, they don't have a good place to take care of them.
As we were getting ready to leave the museum and as it was closing for the day, there was some kind of security alarm that went off, and they wouldn't let us back through the main entrance, so we found a back exit that wasn't guarded and we walked a few blocks around the building back to the front. We then took a subway down to Trafalgar Square where they had a festival going on called West End Live, where all of the theatre (notice that British spelling?) companies perform excerpts from their show. But as we were walking over, we noticed that the National Gallery was open for another 45 minutes and we went in to see some Da Vinci, Monet, Botticelli and a lot of other paintings that run together. As we came out, we walked around the square and there wasn't any shows that I recognized playing on the stage, so we just walked around.
St. Martins-in-the-Fields, which at one time really was in the field, but now sits squarely in an urban jungle.
We then walked up the street to Picadilly Circus to just get a feel of the street life there.
Notice the sign? I was prepared with my pick-pocket-proof backpack and wasn't affected.
After walking around Picadilly Circus, we took the underground back over to Hyde Park and went to Speakers Corner, where people set up soap boxes and preach to the crowds. I had heard it had died down over the years and there wasn't much left to it, but when we got there, we saw 5-6 preachers with groups surrounding them. A few were evangelical preachers, but mostly they were islamic, arabic, or were preaching against current political events. I found it very fascinating to see.
We wanted to go to Pret to eat, but when we got over to the store, they had closed for the night. So we went back to the hotel and went to bed.
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