A Reminder: Part 1

For those of you who can't remember or never learned why my parents are cooler than yours, allow me to rectify that.

In the nascent stages of the year, we asked Mom and Dad if we could take our family vacation with them prior to giving birth to a genetic scramble composed partially of me, but hopefully mostly of Jes. They graciously said yes, and foolishly (monetarily, anyways) allowed us to pick the destination.

Jes being the Anglophile she is, said England, and I being the...Francophile(? That makes me sound like I love James Franco) I am, really wanted to see France. I'm not really a Francophile (I don't much care for James Franco), but I was quite interested in seeing France.

Within days tickets had been purchased, tours had been reserved, and we were stupid excited for a trip that was basically 6 months away.

Fast forward those months, and we arrive here:

Sadly, this is honestly the second-best picture of the two of us the whole trip.

That's us aboard the Heathrow Express, after a 1.5 hour flight from Salt Lake to Los Angeles, a 3 hour layover in LA, and a 9.5 hour flight from LA to Heathrow in London. Thankfully, I slept from about 20 minutes after takeoff to about 20 minutes before landing, but Jes was not so fortunate. But we were in London! Hooray!

We did, however have a hard time finding where our rented apartment thing was, and Jes was so tired, she had to sit down.

Naturally, that bench was about 100 yards from where we were staying, but it took us an hour to find it.

That evening, we went for a walkabout to find some food, and were stunned to see:

Saint Paul's was basically 2 blocks from our apartment!

Visible are Tower Bridge, The Globe Theater, Millennium Bridge,
and several people without faces, or complete bodies.
Panorama on the iPhone at its best.
(If you click on all the panorama pictures they become quite large.)
((I'd recommend it.))

Our first full day in London was spent at the Tower of London, which is famous for the Crown Jewels, as well as being ridiculous in its awesomeness.

The White Tower, built by William the Conqueror.

A more different view of the White Tower.
And yes, that's the front door on the second story there.

Our Beefeater guide was fantastic.
He was also one of the 4 guards to take care of the ravens.

The Tower Complex. The grass is where the moat was.

That evening we all went to Singing in the Rain, which was quite excellent. And yes. It did rain in the theater. And yes, those people in the first 4 rows got quite wet.

The next day we went to Saint Paul's, which, if I'm honest, was my favorite single event of the trip. It was breathtaking inside. No pictures were allowed inside, sadly, but man. Amazing.

The light on the right is actually a 10-mega nuke going off.

After St. Paul's we headed off on the train to Windsor Castle, which is probably the most picturesque and adorable place in the world. And apparently an ideal location to defend against rampaging hordes.

These soldiers kindly shouted at some folk to "MOVE IT!" right before they almost trampled them to death

The Royal Residence. The Queen lives in there. The QUEEN.

St. George's Chapel, where Henry VIII is buried.

That evening, Jes and I went to Mama Mia, which in all honesty was actually pretty decent. No one in the front 4 rows got wet though. So, needs improvement.


The next day, which happened to be October 7th (my brithday!), we went to Buckingham Palace. Jes tells me that when you tour the White House, they kinda move you quickly through about 4 rooms, one of which may or may not be a hallway, and then dump you outside. Buckingham Palace takes the opposite approach. They show you pretty much everything but the Queen's bedroom. It was also the last day of the Diamond Jubilee celebration that went on this summer to commemorate Elizabeth's 60th year as monarch. So naturally there were 600 million people there. In spite of that, this was Jes' favorite part of the trip.

This takes the cake as the best picture of us by far.

Buckingham Palace

This building was super rad so I took a picture of it.
It's a hotel, but resembles Harrods, which I didn't take a picture of. 

 We made a sojourn into Harrods and man, it was seriously like being a stranger in a strange land. And everyone in that strange land is so lucratively wealthy, they don't mind spending £1,000 on a vest. Or £4,000 on shoes. One pair of shoes. £4,000. Our desire to buy something there died. Very quickly.

That was our last full day in England, and the next morning, we were going to hop aboard the Channel Tunnel train (affectionately called the Chunnel) to head to Calais and France. We left from Paddington Station, which is adjacent to King's Cross Station of Harry Potter fame. We had a little while to kill so we wanted to go look at Platform 9 3/4s.

There's platforms 9 and 10. Between them? Nothing. Air.
I feel lied to. My whole childhood, ruined.

We were quite disappointed.

Until we found this!

Jes goes for casual while slipping past the barrier to the Hogwart's Express.

Except it's actually just wedged between two stores.

Jes thinks they might have renovated since Harry Potter was written, but it was still a little soul crushing.

RIP Childhood.

King's Cross

And with that, we left England!