You say 'erb, we say Herb

Okay, so, a few details.  I'm going to start with today because it's freshest on my mind, mmkay?  Got a problem with that?  Well too bad!  Does it say "[insert your name here]'s Holiday?"    Didn't think so.  Deal.

So, today started just like any other (of the past 4 days).   She woke up to the melodic sound of car horns coming through the open window just above her head mixed with the buzzing of her alarm-in-a-cell-phone.  She then proceeded to push Snooze and sleep for another 15 minutes. 
Time is a funny little bugger.  Isn't it weird how sometimes we can feel like it took forever to fall asleep, when in all reality it was only like 5 minutes?  They say that the average adult human being takes approximately 7 minutes to fall asleep.   Sometimes it feels like ages.  Why is that, really?  And why/how did the American people lose the British accent?  I mean, America started out British.   How did we come up with the "accent" that we have now?  Is it like the color black - a total absorption of all the other accents that mingled their way in?  And on that note, why do Canadians sound so similar to us when they're a completely different country?   Honestly, people.  But I digress.


(This non-sequiter was brought to you by our proud sponsors at o-dark-thirty.  And now back to your regularly scheduled blog post.)


Then she finally made herself get up, check her email, talk to a couple friends online, and then finally got ready for the day.   And here's where our story starts, folks.

[Author's insert:  Do you ever wish that bloggers would skip the cheesy fluff and just get to the point?   You don't?  Oh good.]

I'd decided that I wanted to go see the Imperial War Museum today to check out the stuffs there...   They have all these old war tanks and airplanes and non-explosive bomb shells and all this crazy-go-nuts stuff.  On the Lower Ground floor (yay European floor/level-naming scheme) they had these two exhibits - the Trench Experience and the Blitz Experience.  With both, they have a model trench/bomb shelter set up that you walk through, and they've tried to recreate the sounds and smells and model-sights that you would have seen in an actual trench/bombed neighborhood in The Blitz.   It was a little bit cheesy if you take it that way, but it was also really kind of... cool in a not-cool way.  Eye opening.   Home-turf violence is so completely foreign to us American young adult civilians.   Part of me wants to think that warfare has become more civilized - but then I remember how many Afghanistani civilians have been accidentally killed by American air raids.  Hitler tried to bomb England into submission - trying to bomb the Taliban into submission isn't going to work.  And isn't working.  And is just pissing off the civilians.

As a fairly ridiculous side note, every single time in the above paragraph that I typed the word "bomb," my fingers typed "bomg"...  B-omg folks!  Hehe...   Oh be still my text-happy heart..

After the Imperial War Museum, I made my way on the Tube back to the City to check out Buckingham Palace.  The flag was up - the Queen was home!   It's kind of funny that they only fly the flag when the queen is home..  Shouldn't it always be flying?  Hmm...  So I took some pictures since I couldn't really get in (they only do tours of the State Rooms during the summer) and some pictures of the Queen Victoria monument that's in the square (more of a circle really) in front of the palace.  I tried to get myself in a few shots, to prove that I was actually there... but we'll see.  lol     And then, Harry Potter 7 audiobook still playing in my ears, I walked down St James Park - which is gorgeous.  So pretty!  There's this big pond with loads of birds - some pigeons walking around the outside of the pond, about 6 different species of ducks (including these ones that were like 3 feet tall, what the heck!)  and 3 white/pink (yep) pelicans, and a few black swans.  And these weird little dodo-bird looking things that were small and black with red beaks.  They looked like ducks in the water, but then on land they looked... I don't know.  Weird.   But cool, because being a black bird with a bright red beak kind of automatically makes you cool.  It was a super cloudy day so the color quality in all of my outdoorsy pictures today really isn't super amazing, but that's okay - it's all part of the London experience.  Clouds included.

Once I got to the other end of the park, I went to the Churchill Museum/Cabinet War Rooms (the rooms that Churchill & Cabinet used during 1939-1945).  Really historical, really awesome, kind of hard to describe. 

It's just so weird being in these places and picturing these people 60 years ago, living/walking/breathing in this same spot, not knowing exactly what was about to happen.  What were they thinking about?   What were their names?  (Other than Churchill, of course.)   Who did they worry about?  Did they have children they'd sent out into the countryside?   What did they eat for lunch on November 10th?   and the like.

Then, saw the  Changing of the Guards, took a video of course - because I'm so obviously a tourist, wearing white/silver tennis shoes - and attempted to take a picture of myself with one of the guards behind me.  It's on the list of things to do that SarahBudge wrote for me before I left, so I had to do it!  I hope I can fulfill her request for what I need to do in Italy...hehe...   We'll see...     After the self-portraits were taken by a silly-feeling tourist such as myself, I wandered down the street and crossed Downing Street (where the Prime Minister lives?/works?) and tried to take a picture of 10 Downing Street (see above ( )s)  but of course, the road is blocked off by gates and police guards.   Because it'd be silly to be able to just meander up to the Prime Minister's pad and be like, "Sup dude, fancy a bomb with your morning cuppa?"  So, my uber zoom was employed and I believe a decent picture was had.  

Continue down Parliament Road, to the first Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - which is, I believe, the only one that's actually empty.  Picture snapped, consideration given, thoughts turned to those fighting..   Continue walking on my sad little feet, starving, past some Lion-something pub that's famous, and also seems to be the only eatery within a (x)-block radius of where I was.  And I was hungry where I was.  Very hungry.  Understandably so in my book, as it was nearly 15:00 and I'd eaten naught but a bit of cheese and Gluten-free roll prior to the ImpWarMuse.   (Nice abbreviation job, Holly.)   So I stopped at the Tesco Express, which is a sorta grocery store, and got some cheese and a bit of bread.  Yeah.... and I enjoyed the heck out of that gluteny goodness.   Mmm....  I really might just throw the whole thing out the window for Paris and Rome.   Even here, everything revolves around sandwiches.   And who goes to Paris and doesn't have a crepe?

It was chilly, so instead of waiting til 5:00 to get into the Evensong at Westminster Abbey, I went back to Meagan's place and duked it out with a not-very-understandable desk guy at the dorms to get the spare key, since Meagan wasn't home.   Grabbed my jacket, headed out to the British Library to see a bunch of ridiculously awesome things such as the original manuscripts of:  Jane Austen's Persuasion, "Lewis Carroll" (pen name)'s Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, Handel's Messiah, plus the Magna Carta and loads of other awesome things.   I could live there.

Enter Meagan back on the scene at the library.   We headed out to Piccadilly Square to hopefully get tickets to see Les Miserables, which we did successfully.  And since the whole Gluten thing was already out the window....there was a Cinnabon there...   Yes, I had a Cinnabon.   Since gluten makes me blow up faster than Aunt Marge, hopefully I'll still be recognizable when I get home. 

Les Miserables was incredible.  Way more incredible than I remember it as a 10-year-old seeing it at Capitol Theater in Salt Lake.  I cried.  I'm such a baby.  It was soo good!!   :'-)


Oh and seriously?  Piccadilly Square = Times Square, except with 400+ year old buildings. And driving on the wrong side of the road.  

And now I'm back at my temporary home-away-from-home, typing this blog for all you lovely folks (read: myself).   The dull thudding of complaint from my feet is far more easily ignorable today than it was the day before yesterday.  I've got an awesome blister on my right foot that I've been trying to convince to take a vacation to the Bahamas.   He hasn't been persuaded yet.   Europeans must have some seriously tough feet.   Honestly, I really like walking around everywhere, and taking the tube everywhere, and riding the tube, and watching other people riding the tube and walking everywhere.  My feet and Mister Blister don't much care for it, but I totally love it.  It makes my little heart happy.

I really should type details about the past 2 days as well...   But as it's already past midnight here, and I really should get to bed since I'm climbing St Paul's tomorrow morning and walking Hampton Court Palace and Gardens in the afternoon, I think I'll head to sleep.   Get it?  Got it?  Great!  :-D

I can't believe tomorrow's my last day in London.   But I am quite excited for the train ride to Paris, and just freaking being in Paris..