Day 125: I actually got dressed and left the house today! Just a brief run to Target, but hey, it was something to do on the final day before going back to work. And our final Lego vacation memento: Another version of London.
Year 50
Year 50 Day 124
Day 124: Being able to have nearly a full unscheduled week after the travel part of our vacation finished is so nice. I highly recommend this approach to easing back into normal life. Oh, and today’s post-vacation Lego: a classic red double-decker London bus!
Year 50 Day 122
Day 122: More lazing around. We haven’t even unpacked or done laundry yet! Today’s post-travel Lego build: A classic yellow New York City taxicab.
Year 50 Day 121
Day 121: We’re home! After three weeks of travel, including a transcontinental railway journey from Seattle to New York City, touring NYC and seeing a Broadway show, a trans-Atlantic voyage on the Queen Mary II, four days in London, the flight back, and a couple nights to acclimate, it’s good to be in our own space again!
Also, during the months leading up to the trip, we found a few Lego sets that relate to the trip in some way. However, we didn’t want to build them just yet, as any photos might have ended up hinting at our travels, and we were having fun planning that without telling most people about our plans. So now I get to build them! First up: The New York City skyline.
Year 50 Day 120
Day 120: Today was all about napping and adjusting to the time difference. It was also an amusingly quiet mid-week stay at the DoubleTree with nothing else going on at the hotel. I’ve remarked on it before, but after spending so much time here over the past decade and a half during conventions, it’s always a little jarring to see the hotel this empty and undecorated.
Year 50 Day 119
Day 119: Goodbye London! We checked out of our hotel, caught a cab to Heathrow, and boarded our plane for home. After a long day of flying (two flights, with a brief layover in Calgary), we landed in Seattle. Instead of going straight home, however, we went to the DoubleTree Hotel near the airport (which, thanks to Norwescon, we’re very familiar with) so that we could spend two nights there huddled behind their heavy-duty blackout curtains in an attempt to force our clocks through the eight-hour time change.
Year 50 Day 118
Day 118: Today we started off at Westminster Abbey, including the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries special exhibit, which has an incredible view of the abbey (but doesn’t allow photos) in addition to the extra artifacts on display. The abbey is beautiful, and it was neat to glance around and constantly be seeing another tomb or memorial with a historical name I recognized.
As we were waiting for our entrace time to the abbey we walked around the blocks surrounding it, getting some gorgeous views of the Palace of Westminster (Parliament) and Big Ben (technically the Elizabeth Tower; Big Ben is the bell), seeing New Scotland Yard, and some statues of famous people — including Abraham Lincoln. So yes, we went to London to visit a Lincoln memorial. ;)
After Westminster we walked over to Buckingham Palace, then took a stroll through Hyde Park to the Marble Arch (which is under renovation, so is currently serving as a Vodaphone advertisement), and then went on to Selfridge’s department store. Which may seem like a slightly odd tourist destination, but we had recently watched a surprisingly interesting PBS documentary on Henry Selfridge and the store that bears his name, so we had fun wandering through.
Finally, we ended the day with a visit to the London Eye ferris wheel and its beautiful views of London.
Year 50 Day 117
Day 117: We kicked off our day at the Tower of London, heading in as soon as the gates opened and starting by going straight for the Crown Jewels (which, phrased that way, sounds much more heist-y than it actually was). It’s a great way to make sure you can better appreciate them — it wasn’t much later at all in the day when we saw lines forming, where we were able to head right into the exhibit. Once done with those, we spent the rest of the morning just slowly working our way through the rest of the Tower exhibits at our own pace.
Once done with the Tower, and after taking some time to rest, we headed off for a Jack the Ripper walking tour of Whitechapel run by and ending with a visit to the Jack the Ripper Museum. This was a fun way to see a lot of the back streets and areas that we wouldn’t have wandered into on our own, all while getting an amusingly sensationalized (and occasionally conspiracy-theory-enhanced) account of the Jack the Ripper murders and mystery.
After that, since we didn’t have anything else planned and figured we could both use some more time to rest, we just settled into our hotel room and watched Mary Poppins, which seemed like a perfect choice after a couple of days exploring London.
Year 50 Day 116
Day 116: Our first day of exploring London!
We started with a visit to the British Museum, which is a huge, gorgeous museum packed with loot artifacts stolen acquired from across the globe. It’s also so popular that I found it impossible to really enjoy the visit — there’s absolutely no opportunity to actually stop and appreciate anything, because there are simply so many other people crowded in, pushing through, and all to often either stepping directly in front of you or physically pushing you aside so that they can see whatever you’re trying to look at. Honestly, as gorgeous as the museum is, and as impressive as its collection is, the actual experience was something of a disappointment. That said, we made the most of it, and did see a lot of neat stuff.
Once we finished with the museum, we came back to the hotel to rest for a while. Then we were off again! We took a cab up to Shakepeare’s Globe, walked across the Millennium Bridge and around St. Paul’s Cathedral (sadly, there was no old woman selling crumbs to feed the birds for tuppence a bag), saw a rainbow over London as we came back across the Millennium Bridge, and then watched an incredibly good performance of Macbeth at the Globe.