London

Thursday, July 8, 2010 London, England

Good Morning from London-

We had a very uneventful flight from Rome to London if you call 20 some hyper Italian upper elementary students on an airplane uneventful. We heard some poor older English women complaining to one of the flight attendants as we left the plane. They were actually acting quite normally but you can imagine on a plane everything was magnified. Tim enjoyed it because you could not hear the annoying safety instructions over the noise of the kids. Madison thought they were all evil.

At any rate it is great to be in London. As beautiful as Italy is and as incredible as the food and wine tastes in Italy, England somehow feels more like home. We are staying in a very non descript hotel about a 10 minute walk from Victoria Station. Madison laughed when we first went in our room because she said everything in the room was “squished”. There is barely enough room to turn around and we are sure the ship we will be cruising on will have a larger bathroom. But it is cheap and clean and very well located.

Yesterday we took a bus from Victoria Station to the British Museum. We were all fascinated by the Rosetta Stone and the Egyptian mummies and sarcophagi. Some of the things we remember from a previous visit, such as illuminated bibles and Mendelssohn original scores, have been moved to one of the buildings of the British Library system. After lunch we went by bus, again, because Lynda says you can see more from the bus than the tube, to St. Paul’s. A bit of a disappointment, St. Paul’s. They are now charging 12 pounds per visitor to enter the cathedral. We looked around as best we could from in front of the ticket kiosk and left. We did do something new and different when we left St. Paul’s. In 2000 London built a pedestrian bridge across the Thames that they very cleverly called the Millennium Bridge. On the north bank of the Thames the bridge is just below St. Paul’s and on the south bank it comes out at the Tate Modern art gallery. Right next to the Tate Modern is the brand new Globe Theatre built to look like the old Globe theatre. And amazingly enough right next to the Globe Theatre is a pub. We will let you guess which we visited first! We actually don’t particularly like the Tate Modern. Prince Charles, unfortunately is correct when he says that the Tate Modern is “a carbuncle on the face of London.” But we thought Madi might enjoy and possibly explain what we were missing in the art work. We think she enjoyed the gallery but was not able to give us much more insight into the art work. During the day Madison was able to do some more souvenir shopping and we enjoyed an excellent dinner of fish and chips with mushy peas at a pub that is about a 5 minute walk from our hotel. Believe it or not, Tim was the only person to actually eat his mushy peas. Bad Lynda and Madison!

Today, in no particular order, we are going to visit Harrods, Covent Garden, The Victoria and Albert Museum, and Abbey Road of Beatle fame. A Beatles Moment: Yesterday was Ringo Starr’s 70th birthday. Heather - he was the drummer in the Beatles. The London Times yesterday had an editorial that called for the Queen to finally give Ringo his much deserved knighthood. If the Times is editorializing about this, you can imagine the clamor around the rest of the country. Tonight we are planning on meeting friends from East Lansing for dinner. Louise is a professor in MSU’s college of nursing and has been teaching in MSU’s summer program in London for over twenty years. Louise’s husband, Bill is a college friend from Hope.

Tomorrow Madison flies home. We know she has enjoyed this trip thoroughly, but also sense she is ready to get back home to her family and friends. As much as she professes to miss her sister, we have a pool to guess how long after she gets home before she and Jocey are at each others throats. After seeing Madi off we will rent a car and spend the weekend in the Cotswold’s and then drive to Eastbourne to see our friends Clive and Angie. Monday we board our ship for our two week cruise. It will certainly be different for us to be cruising with people our age instead of spending all of our time with a teenager. Our guess is that it won’t be very long on the cruise before we wish we were with that lovely teenager again.

Cheers for now.