Day 3: Day Tripper, yeah...

For some reason... for some reason... I don't know what the reason was... but for some reason, there was a pack of men outside on the street playing soccer (or football as they call it in England) until 2AM.
Because my grandma and I were sharing a room next to the streets, and because the windows and walls weren't that thick... well, I didn't get such a good night of sleep.
We had a busy day planned and therefore, I had to get up early to take a shower. No sooner was the shower taken, than I was besieged with a migraine. Thankfully, it wasn't the most severe of migraines - only threw up twice, woohoo! - and we were on the road by noon.

Our first stop was The Sherlock Holmes Museum, 221b Baker Street.

The Museum is first come, first serve, so you have to wait in line until the nice guardsman at the door lets you in. (Meanwhile, you can take pictures with him!)

Also, conveniently located next to the line was The Beatles Shop!

Inside, all things Beatles... CDs, books, postcards, socks (!!!), bookmarks, luggage, and, of course, t-shirts!

Lots and lots and LOTS of t-shirts! Across from the ones I'm looking at above, there were even more! I got one that has this picture on it:

Finally we reached the end of the line and were let into The Sherlock Holmes Museum!
On the ground floor is a tasteful little hat rack for guests (and a view into the gift shop). Then you ascend seventeen steps (yes, they got the number right from the books; I counted) and you are on the First Floor which includes the sitting room where so many of Holmes and Watson's adventures begin, and Sherlock Holmes' bedroom.

In the sitting room, opposite a couch for clients, and next to the fireplace, are the two familiar chairs where Holmes and Watson have often reclined. There are props available for your use as you pose as The Great Detective and his Conductor of Light.

(Notice the Persian slipper on the mantlepiece?)

(Striking a Sherlockian pose. Though for the life of me I couldn't remember if Sherlock Holmes [in the books] put his steepled hands under his chin or not! I know Benedict Cumberbatch made a comment on how his Sherlock didn't do it the right way... but I couldn't remember which way was right.)

(Who knew the Great Detective wore a blue rain jacket? [And a deerstalker, for that matter...])

On the next floor was Dr. Watson and Mrs. Hudson's rooms. Dr. Watson's room was full of memorabilia and furniture of the Victorian era, while Mrs. Hudson's room was full of display cases containing articles and clues from the books including but not limited to...

The next level was my favorite. Wax scenes from the books!

(Excuse my poor editing skills of the above picture. The room was too small and too full of people to take the full picture so I had to smush it together.)

Tintin had lots of fun with the waxwork as well...

(From 'The Man With The Twisted Lip')

("Oh, darling, what is that thing you're carrying?!" "I don't know, darling! I can't get it off me!")

(What's that in her veil? From 'Charles Augustus Milverton')

Tintin also got to meet The Hound of the Baskervilles...

At this point Tintin was having a flashback from our trip to the East Coast two years ago...

(Dinosaur at the Creation Museum in Kentucky)

One of the creepier wax figures was...

JAMES MORIARTY! 

The museum is a wonderful place to go! Especially if you are a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Next up... lunch! We went across the street to a restaurant decorated with murals of Sherlock Holmes. I had a pancake. It was very good. But I missed my cousin, whom I usually eat pancakes with. 

Baker Street is a really fun place to go!

After lunch (which we ate around 2:00) my dad and I split ways with my mom and grandma. Grama wanted to go back to the Westminster Abbey gift shop to buy a few things, so Mom decided to go with her.

Daddy and I, on the other hand, went to Abbey Road!

And on Abbey Road... Abbey Road Studios!

You walk along a low, white wall, filled with tributes to The Beatles and then find yourself in front of...

 

And across from that...

Strangely enough, this was one of my favorite parts of London! For some reason, it just made me very, very happy. 

One thing I was not expecting was how many people there were crowded around, trying to take pictures! You had to wait your turn. And if you had four people, and no one to hold the camera, men were there in green jerseys that said HELP and they would take your picture for you!

My dad and I were supposed to go to Westminster Abbey to meet my mom and grandma after this... but we made a few stops along the way.

Our associate pastor at church, when he found out we were going to London and not going to see the British museum, was outraged. "You HAVE to go and see the Rosetta Stone!" he said.

So we popped in just for him.

I am DETERMINED to go back to London so that I can spend a good few days sifting through the British Museum. It's free and it's HUGE and it has SO much cool stuff! We only walked through a corner of the Egypt section, but I wished we could have stayed longer!

Man, can you believe that thousands of years ago, someone carved all those symbols on that rock? And they knew what it all meant too! And that it survived all these years! It really is truly amazing.

(Pigeons on the glass roof.)

Our plan was to take the tube from the British Museum to Westminster Abbey. We were alright for the first half of the trip, but then we had to change trains. So, we walked (underground - how cool!) quite a good ten minutes or so only to find out that the line was being worked on... so we had to walk all the way back.

We asked a kind gentleman what the quickest way to get to Westminster would be and he said we could either take the bus over the Thames (for we were on the wrong side) or walk across one of the bridges.

We decided to walk so that we could get some pictures of Big Ben.

Tired though we were, we walked along the waterfront, passed the London Eye (whoa! LONG lines there!), and then over a bridge, RIGHT passed Big Ben!!

Once across the bridge we were only a hop, skip, and a jump away from Westminster Abbey. But we couldn't go over there without getting a picture with this guy...

As I said before... You gotta love Winston Churchill! (Once, a woman who was upset with him came up and said, "If you were my husband, I'd put poison in your coffee!" He replied, "If you were my wife, I'd drink it!")

Finally we found my mom and grandma. We had worried them because we were so late. Sorry Mom!

One of the things my grandma was adamant about seeing in London was the Tower of London, so we took the tube there.

 

And nearby, the Tower Bridge...

And quite close by all this, part of an old Roman wall that has been standing since the year 190 AD!!

Incredible, incredible, incredible to stand next this old, old artifact. Absolutely amazing. It's situated next to a posh hotel, with some houses behind it.

The end of the wall is near the tube station, and there is a nice Roman statue there as well.

 

We were getting hungry by this time (though some nice, fresh honey-roasted peanuts did tide us over) and it was getting dark... but there was one last stop that we had to make...

A real police box!!! In the 1960's, police boxes were common sights on the streets of London. It's basically a "mini-police station." It has a phone on the inside for the police, or just regular people, to call the police from in case of emergency.

The police box was made famous because of the British sci-fi show Doctor Who, where a mysterious time-traveling alien, well, travels through time and space in one of these police boxes! (Don't worry, it's bigger on the inside).

It was pouring rain by this time, though we had had nice weather earlier in the day. This was in a part of town that we really hadn't researched. We knew the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space) was around somewhere... but where? We didn't know. We were trying to decide whether or not it was worth it to wander around looking for it, when we asked someone if they knew where it was. Low and behold it was about twenty feet away to the tube station (on the right)! So we popped over for a few pictures.

 

Finally we arrived back in the neighborhood of our hotel, nearly weak from hunger. Of course, the obvious place to eat dinner was the Dicken's Tavern!

 

That's where we ate the bangers and mash. 

Tintin! What would Captain Haddock say?

There ends our third and final day in London! Next, on to the Netherlands!

Slaap lekker! (Good night, have a nice sleep, etc.)