Sarah and Mike Do London

We spent two days in London this week, one more chance to see the sights. We'd planned to have dinner with friends and stay there overnight. On the train in, we looked at a map and made plans for the rest of our time; Sarah's top choices were to see the Gherkin, the Tate Modern, and the blue whale at the Natural History Museum that we couldn't see last time.

So from Liverpool Street Station we walked a few blocks to St Mary's Axe. Sarah suggested we try a "hey I'm holding up the Gherkin" pose.


Then we made our way toward St. Paul's Cathedral. Here's a building I've wanted to capture for a while, and on our right (behind the climbing monkey) is the Bank of England.


From St. Paul's we crossed the Millennium Bridge. I asked Sarah to get this picture of me against the railing.


Then we saw some Surrealists at the Tate Modern, and later retired to the top floor café for some tea and to savour the view of the Thames.


We continued along the south bank and Sarah found more things to climb.


We walked under the London Eye and crossed the Westminster Bridge, where I finally got a good view of Parliament from the other side.


We spent some time resting on the grass in Parliament Square.


Then walked up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square. Look! It's the Nelson Column!


Sarah didn't get to climb the lions this time as they were fenced off - a screen was erected between them and a live BBC broadcast of Beijing Olympics was showing on it.

By now we were quite tired from hours of walking and sightseeing, so we got a quick view of Picadilly Circus and trudged to Fortnum & Mason, where I picked some Italian reds and Sarah helped me pick some chocolates for dinner.

Then we took the Tube back to Liverpool Street and caught a bus to Hackney to meet our friends Alessio and Angela. I used to work with Alessio and we have enjoyed many wonderful meals, and I wanted us to share one more.

Sarah was shy for a while but was soon her animated self. She played DJ with my iPod, told jokes, and started taking timer shots of us.


And asked us to make faces.


And express her unique affection for her dad.


The next morning we had a lazy start. We said goodbye to our friends, and then we made our way to South Kensington to the Museum of Natural History once more. We were both hungry so we first went to the restaurant. Sarah wanted to show me her new beard.


We said hello to the dinosaur again in the main hall.


And we finally got to see the blue whale.


Once more Sarah got to ride the escalator through the centre of the earth, to the earth science exhibits. (What kid would not want to visit given this entrance?)


And though we'd cruised through halls of birds, mammals, and sea life, Sarah was very taken in with the earth science exhibits, taking time to study interactive displays. She was quite interested.


We were both getting a bit exhausted by now. I needed to get us on the train before the late afternoon peak times so we took our last Underground ride to Liverpool Street and boarded a train home.

Tonight is our last night in our beds. We're mostly done sorting things out but we still need to pack and finish sorting our things before they are picked up late tomorrow morning, and we need to finish our cleaning. We'll also be shipping my computer and Margo's textbooks. It will be a busy day for us.