Our last full day in London. We did the breakfast thing again and came back to our room to wait for Pete and Jess to get here from their hotel. They are storing their luggage here until their train leaves this evening. They got here, and we shared our lists of what we were going to do. They took off to do their thing, and we got ready to do our thing.
We decided that it was important to figure out if we could use the tube to get to our train tomorrow with our luggage, so we took the tube from Pimilco to King’s Cross (yes, Harry Potter’s) station. Again the big escalators …this time going up and up and up, then a couple of elevators, and then a set of stairs. We found the East Coast ticket office and changed our confirmation sheet into real tickets. After completing that task, we decided that we would take the tube tomorrow and save the 28 pounds for a taxi.
Next came the #30 bus to Baker Street. We were off to find 221B Baker Street, home of Sherlock Holmes. Had some young ladies on the bus ask if we were from America. They had lived with their grandmother in San Diego for four years. They asked how we got to England…..most impressed with the Queen Mary. Got off at our stop and searched out the famous address. We went into the little shop and checked out the souvenirs, but we decided not to spend the twelve pounds for the tiny museum of a fictional character.
We thought we might check out Madame Tossauds Wax Museum….the lines went on forever and the entry fee was 56 pounds for the two of us…..close to 85 US dollars. Once again we declined.
The weather in London today is quite warm and unpleasant. And walking anywhere in the bright sunshine was very warm. We bought a cold Coke from a vendor who assured us that the day wasn’t really busy but there were people everywhere.
We walked north to Regent’s Park and went through the rose garden. This was most impressive thing -- huge beds of hundreds of roses of the same variety all growing and blooming together—absolutely beautiful. Thousands of blooms in dozens of colors--the view and the smell were stupendous, but we had other places to visit.
Back to Baker street and a bus south to Hyde Park corner. Through a busy part of the city and where the crane took up three of four lanes just to hoist construction materials to the sky the jam was severe. We got off at Hyde Park and bought some lunch and ate in the shadow of the Marble Arch—not really the arch but some trees near by. We then walked through a small part of Hyde Park—very shady and very pretty. There weren’t any speakers at the speaker’s corner…I think they were all protesting at Parliament. We boarded a bus, transferred at Victoria and made our way, admittedly a roundabout way to White Hall and walked toward the palace to the Guards Museum. The young lady outside said admission was six pounds each, but the guardsman inside said for retired folks such as ourselves it was only two pounds each. He then gave us a brief history of the Regiments of Guards—he was a Coldstream Guard retired. We then walked through the small museum rich with uniforms, honors, traditions, very very interesting. It also had a display of Guardsmen’s cartoons which were absolutely hilarious. We stopped in the museum shop which was really a toy soldier shop. Those lead soldiers that Doug, Peter and I had as kids go for 20 pounds and up each.
We found as we prepared to head back to the room to meet Pete and Jess that the Gurads Museum isn’t close to any busses. We walked to Buckingham Palace and then almost to Victoria Station before we found a bus that would get us to the hotel. We arrived just on time as we had planned. Met them, they agreed to take some of our luggage with them and walked to the Tube station where we said good by until tomorrow. We caught a bus to dinner, caught a bus to the grocery, walked back to the Hotel—two glasses with ice from the bar, collapsed in our warm room in front of the fan.
20,073 steps plus the museum shuffle at the Guards.
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