Hello everyone! I hope you all had a good Fourth of July. We didn't do anything for the Fourth. Not really a big deal over here, if you can imagine. Ryan was working out of the Cambridge office that day, so he traded the fourth off for Friday and I flew down to join him.
On Friday we took the train into London. It was a great chance to see some of the sights that we just hadn't had time to see when we were there on vacation a couple of years ago. The first thing we did was go to St Pauls Cathedral. Wow. I am a sucker for cathedrals and abbeys. I especially liked St Pauls because it survived the Blitz, thanks to volunteer firefighters who kept watch every night. What a landmark.There were three different viewing galleries in the cathedral, the lowest inside and the two highest on the outside of the building. We couldn't go to the very top because the wind was too strong. The views were still phenomenal from our middle perch, some 270 or so steps up.
Then we headed to the British Museum, where we stayed a little too long (for me, not Ryan). I have a time limit of about 2 hours in any type of museum before I start to go bonkers. There's only so much you can take in. We hit the Ancient Egypt section and looked at all the mummies, which was interesting. The building was pretty fabulous too.
When all attractions were safely closed, we just wandered a bit. Took in the views of Parliament and Big Ben, the London Eye, and Westminster Abbey. As we headed towards Buckingham Palace we ran into the Tour de France. Yep, really. I still haven't figured out why the Tour de France started in England, but it did. The Prologue (which is only 7.9 km so I don't know what the point is) was in London on Saturday. We didn't get to see it, but we got to walk along the finish line the night before. It looked like quite a big deal. Stage 1 was today, and it left London and went towards the coast. At least they got a little closer to France! Anyway, we did eventually get to Buckingham Palace. Big impressive building, beautiful grounds, etc. We got in too late to catch the changing of the guards. I think the Queen was still in Edinburgh while we were there, but I suppose it happened anyway. Oh well.
So that was our day in London. We caught the last train out, which turned out to be an interesting experience in and of itself. I would not recommend catching the late train on a Friday night. Lots of drunk people fighting and kids without tickets. At least it kept us entertained for the 75 minute ride.
The last day we spent with our friends from Bury St Edmunds. We started the day with Ryan getting pulled over for talking on his cell phone. You really can't do that here. A 45 second phone call is going to cost about $120! Oops. If we ever figure out how to pay for it, that is. (hoping we don't) Nobody seems sure how this works with Ryan not having a UK license and living in Scotland, not England. After that excitement, we had a lovely day with our friends and their little girl. We headed into Cambridge and went punting on the River Cam. Punts are the long, skinny, flat boats. There were so many boats on the river it was mass chaos. Adding to it, was the fact that you could either hire a punter to tour you around (which we did) or you could try to do it yourself. Nobody who did that seemed to be having much luck. We watched people fall in, run into trees or walls, or just get stuck perpendicular to the flow of traffic. When that happened, punting became very much like bumper boats. It was great fun, as long as you liked the water. (Sorry, Michelle.)
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