This is the story of a wee lad in a great city, a young man full of questions lost amongst aged stones, walking the same earth that saw the rise and fall of kings and queens and their empires; heard the words and ideas of great poets and great philosophers; and housed the heroes of history...And that was just day one! Yes, this is the tale of Noah's visit to London. For those of you who don't know, Noah is our Nephew. He's 14 years old and he came here to visit in mid July. He stayed with us for 5 days before his father (Laura's brother Paul) showed up and the two of them carried on across Europe to continue their adventure. We'll post more on our time with them both here in London and our meeting with the two of them up in Scotland later, but for now, in this massive post, we will try to convey to you the immense amount of ground we covered as Noah (full of spritely exuberance) all but dragged us about the Old Foggy City. You could almost hear the buildings and several weary oaks whispering in a wheezy voice, "slow down young chap, there's plenty of time, plenty of time to see everything." But, of course, there really wasn't. Enjoy!
So, here you see our protagonist next to one of London's famous red phone booths. We're pretty close to St. Paul's Cathedral here and before that we visited Buckingham Palace, walked through St. James's Park to Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. After having a little picnic in St. Paul's churchyard, we continued on to Spitalfields Market where Noah bought a cool black leather fedora and then we strolled about Brick Lane before finally heading home. By the way, this all happened in the afternoon after we picked Noah up from the airport. What about the jet lag you ask? Pshaw! Jet lag! what a bunch of rubbish!
We realized that we haven't posted any pictures of the inside of the British Museum. So, here's a snapshot. It's an incredibly beautiful building and Noah caught some of the essence of it with this great picture on our first full day of sightseeing. We spent quite a bit of time here (maybe three hours), but I'm fairly certain one day or even one week would not give you enough time to cover everything there is to see in this place.
After a hearty and healthy lunch at Noah's favorite place to eat here in London (Pizza Express) we headed south of the Thames to see the Imperial War Museum. This is a shot of Noah next to one of the shells they used to fire out of the German Big Bertha artillery gun.
Here our fedora clad hero poses by the fuselage of arguably the most successful bomber of World War II: the Lancaster.
And this is the outside of the museum with two big guns from a British battle ship mounted out front. It, also, is a rather pretty building.
We made our way back across the river and walked along it for a bit before catching a bus to Trafalgar Square. Noah snapped this picture looking back south across the river at some modern green buildings with some kayakers in the foreground.
And finally, we have Noah atop one of the Trafalgar Lions during a beautiful summer day in the great city. Day 2 complete!
And here's a picture of us on the third day of Noah's visit. We're looking surprisingly fresh despite our lack of sleep and all the traipsing about the city from the previous two days. This is in front of a section of Roman Wall that can be seen just outside of Tower Hill tube station. It's pretty incredible as it's one of the few visible signs still standing in London showing that the Romans were actually here, but if you didn't know about it you could easily walk right by.
After the Roman wall we carried on to the Tower of London. This is the central tower, known as White Tower and it houses most of the exhibits (like the armor). The slightly tan tower that you can see behind it is where they keep the crown jewels.
That day we were lucky enough to catch a siege weapons demonstration. They had a different name for this, I believe, but the weapon Noah is standing next to is essentially a man powered trebuchet (i.e. it uses people pulling on ropes instead of a counterweight). In the video below you can see me, and three other blokes, operating it.
We were hurling water balloons, but as you can see the pressure was too great for this one.
We started out day 4 with a climb up to the top of the Monument remembering the Great Fire. Here's a shot of Noah and I (Derek) from the top.
From there we went on across Tower Bridge to see the H.M.S Belfast, a WWII era battleship which has been docked in the Thames and turned into a museum of sorts. Just as we got on board, though, we were lucky enough to catch a tall masted sailing boat going under Tower Bridge and requiring the bridge to open, something we haven't seen since we've been here.
And here's Noah sitting at the helm of the Belfast. And that concludes the pictures for Day 4! What you say? That's it? Well, we'll have you know that before we went to the Monument we went down to the Victoria Apollo Theatre where we rushed tickets for Wicked. So, after some supper (again at Pizza Express) we were back down to the Apollo for the evening show. It was very good, but, unfortunately, we don't have any pictures of it. They frown on that.
Noah and I began day 5 with a trip to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard while Laura went to Heathrow to meet Paul.
We then carried on to the Guard Museum, again through St. James's and over to see the horse guards where I took this shot of Noah. From there it was up to Picadilly Circus to meet Paul and Laura, and then to St. Paul's again for another lunch before heading back to our place. 5 days complete. They were really wonderful and we did and saw a ton of stuff we probably wouldn't have if Noah wouldn't have come. The best part, though (no matter how much of a hard time we give him), was getting to spend some quality time with our nephew! If you're reading this Noah, we hope you had as much fun as we did!
