Our trip: Day 3 - London

We woke up to a sunny, clear sky. The kids and I wrote on some postcards we'd bought the day before and took a walk into the village of Horley, near the hotel we were staying at, to a post office. Unfortunately it wasn't open yet, so we ended up taking our postcards back with us. I gave Calum a pound to spend at the store so that it wouldn't be a wasted trip, and he bought several packages of gum, completely ignoring the vast selection of exciting British candy and chocolate. Calum is, as you can see, a big fan of gum.

Onward to the Gatwick express train! This time, once we got into the city, the kids and I were on our own as my dad and Carol were interested in doing some different things than us. We took the underground to the British Museum. Unfortunately, jet lag was kicking in in earnest that day, so we weren't in the best mood for visiting a museum, but we did manage to fit in a thorough viewing of the excellent Egyptian gallery, which has a lot of mummies in it. Megan was quite disappointed to find that the Japanese galleries - which by all accounts are quite good - were closed for renovation, with only a few pieces on display in another part of the museum. We decided to check out the Rosetta Stone, which was barely visible through the mobs of tourists pressing in around the display case, and then looked at the impressive collection of large, stone Egyptian and Persian statuary in the adjacent room.

Before we left the museum, Calum's attention was caught by a display about the "Game of Twenty Squares" which is believed to be the oldest board game in the world, excavated in some royal tombs in Ur. The museum had set up a massive version of the game on the floor in the great court, and anyone who wanted to could play by walking around on the game board, using cushions as dice and game pieces. Since one of Calum's other great loves (aside from gum) is board games, he was thrilled to be able to play what has got to be the biggest board game I've ever seen. He loved being able to jump and walk right on the board, tossing the dice cushions up in the air. He was also very pleased to win the game.

After leaving the museum, we decided to walk towards Piccadilly Circus. Unfortunately, my sense of direction failed me at this point. Not only did we walk in the wrong direction, but when I decided that we should stop at a bus shelter and take a bus the rest of the way, we ended up taking the right bus route - but going in the opposite direction. I was extremely grateful that there was a route map on the inside of the bus, so I was able to figure out pretty quickly that we were headed toward Islington rather than Piccadilly. After changing buses, we finally arrived in Piccadilly Circus feeling very hungry. When we stepped off the bus we found a Japanese store and restaurant directly in front of us. In the crowded, cramped basement was a very busy sushi bar at which we bought some takeout lunch to eat on the steps at the base of the Eros statue in the middle of the circus. It's a great place for watching the people and traffic go by. Unfortunately, the sushi was not great, but I guess I wasn't expecting too much from British sushi. Does this mean I'm turning into a snobby Vancouverite??

After lunch, the kids were pretty worn out so I decided to seek out Hamley's, the biggest toy store in London, just a short walk from Piccadilly Circus on Regent Street. (Have I mentioned how much I love that things are so close together in England??) Calum perked right up when he saw the huge Lego play area in the basement, complete with life-sized Lego models of R2-D2 and other characters. We eventually bought Calum a Star Wars Transformer toy which changes from a bizarre robotic version of Luke Skywalker into a Y-wing fighter.

Our next stop was St. Paul's Cathedral, which Megan had her heart set on visiting, partly in the hope of acquiring a snow globe like the one Mary Poppins uses when she sings the "Bird Woman" song in the Disney movie. "Feeed the biiiirrrrrds... tuppence a bag.....". There were several disappointments involved in our visit to St. Paul's. Thanks to my snafu with the buses earlier, we arrived just a few minutes too late to gain entry during tourist visiting hours, so we weren't able to tour the inside of this very impressive cathedral. We learned that the gift shop was still open, but when we got there we found that there were no snow globes of any kind available, which irritated the heck out of poor Megan. Then we decided to try attending the Evensong service, which at least let us go into the cathedral, but after we learned that the service would be spoken and not sung, we decided to ditch the place and seek out some ice cream. I paid an unbelievable 7.50 (well over $15) for three small, uninspiring ice cream cones sold from an ice cream truck parked outside the cathedral to cater to helpless tourists. This was definitely the most overpriced ice cream we had during the entire trip - and we ate a LOT of ice cream in the space of three weeks.

The bird woman seemed to be taking a day off ;-) so while we ate our ice cream sitting on the steps of St. Paul's, we watched the pigeons pecking at discarded ice creams, apple cores and other garbage dropped on the ground by tourists.

At this point, knowing we'd have a long journey and an early start the next day, I decided it was time to head back to Gatwick and try to ensure a decent night's sleep for the kids. Fate, however, had other plans for us as there had been a huge car accident on the main road in and out of Gatwick. The traffic was backed up for miles, as well as within the airport itself. When we called the hotel to ask them to send the shuttle for us, we learned that it could be a very long wait, so my dad decided to see if he could pick up the rental car early which he'd ordered for the next morning. This worked out well, and though we still had to sit in the horrendous traffic jam at the airport, at least we got out of there sooner and were able to drive straight into Horley to find a restaurant. In the morning during my unsuccessful bid to mail our postcards, I'd noticed an Indian restaurant, so we decided to check that out and ended up eating the most bizarre curries any of us has ever had. Every dish we ordered was cloyingly sweet; it was like eating dessert with chicken and vegetables in it. We were too tired and hungry at this point to do much more than eat the sugary curry and get back to the hotel as quickly as possible so we could get some rest in preparation for a busy day of travel.