Long Layover in London

When you just can't get a direct flight between Copenhagen and the U.S. for a reasonable price, what do you do? Well, we decided if we were going to have a layover, we might as well make it a fun one. We opted for a flight with an 8 hour layover in London-- in the daytime mind you. Middle of the night would not have been so fun. Eight hours isn't a lot of time-- especially since we had to leave time to go back through security at the airport, but it was enough to at least give us a taste of London.

 

We took the Heathrow Express from the airport to Paddington Station, then we bought one-day underground passes for all of us and we were off.

 

The Tube-- London's Underground

We found the Tube pretty easy to navigate. You could get anywhere downtown very quickly and easily. London was almost too easy for us-- the fact that everything was in English reduced the exotic feel of travel.

A monument to workers who died building the Tube.
Rather amazing to realize how old this underground system is.
The oldest sections opened in 1863-- the oldest underground
railway in the world.

Being Sherlock Holmes fans, we stopped off for a minute at the Baker Street Station. We were surprised to find it raining really hard (it had been sunny last we'd seen daylight) but still managed to find a statue of Sherlock Holmes before jumping back on the Tube. We figured we'd go on our longest ride of the day and hope the rain stopped in the mean time. We headed out to the Tower of London.

And it worked-- sunshine! And we had sunshine the rest of the day.We hit London just a few days after the summer Olympics ended, so there were still a lot of signs and such up for Olympic visitors.

 

These footprints were for a children's tour of London. They
led between crazy London Olympics mascots. They made
us feel like we were on Blue's Clues.

 

Just love British English versus American sometimes--
Litter and rubbish sound so much more sophisticated than garbage and
you have to love "lifebuoy."

 

What can I say? I'm an Anglophile. I love historical fiction and I've read a lot of books on English monarchs so I was very excited to see the Tower of London in person. Due to our short time frame, and my families general adversion to crowds and tours, we just checked it out from the outside.

 

Approaching the Tower of London

 

 

 

I'm not sure what sport was set here, but they were definitely taking
down seating and equipment from the Olympics.

 

You can see one of the draw bridges with guard towers on the sides.

Apparently at one point, the royalty kept a zoo here.

 

We found these lion statues made of chicken wire amazing!

 

The Traitor's Gate

 

This is the oldest section of the castle.

 

Next we walked along the Thames up to Tower Bridge and out onto the bridge. 

 

River front buildings--looking from the Tower of London.
 London is a strange mix of old and modern.

We'd seen this shot so much in the Olympic coverage. Fun to
get to see it ourselves.

The Olympic rings from on the bridge.

Looking up the river from the bridge, we could see this huge
warship museum.  It we'd had more time we would have
definitely ended up there.

 

A very British ad on a very British bus.

 

Next stop on our "have to see list" was Big Ben. Maybe this is ignorant, but we hadn't known that Big Ben was part of the Parliament building.  It was also sparklier than we had imagined-- lots of gold. The Parliament building itself was also impressive.  It was huge.  It's another thing the pictures just don't capture-- you walk up the street and the building just keeps going and going and going. And no, we did not ride the London Eye. (Everyone asks us that when we say we went to London.) Our kids declared that it would be as bad as the Eiffel Tower-- they did not enjoy the Eiffel Tower. In some ways we are the anti-tourists.

 

Big Ben with the London Eye in the background



Big Ben

 

 



What is it with the English and their funny hats?
Had to get a picture of the Bobby.



Part of the Parliament Building

More of the Parliament Building. It went on for blocks!

 

St. Margaret's Church- a small church between Parliament and
Westminster Abbey

St. Margaret's had beautiful statues of Rhythmic Gymnasts
on display for the Olympics.

Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey

We walked along the edge of St. James's Park all the way down to Buckingham Palace. The park was a bit of a mess. There were lots of tents and other facilities still up from the Olympics. 

Apparently you can rent one of these lounge chairs to relax in the park.

 

 

Buckingham Palace

Palace gates



The famous palace guards with their pipe cleaner hats.
 

I actually found the monuments and gardens around the palace
more interesting looking than the palace itself.

There were pillars like this for all the different countries that have been
part of the British Empire. There were lots of them.



Queen Victoria Memorial

My son caught this shot and I thought it was a fun juxtaposition
of old and new. (Pretty much all the cool pictures in this
blog were taken by my children).

A World War II Memorial

We walked down past the palace to Hyde Park, and then hopped the Tube again. We were running out of time but had one more stop we really wanted to make--The British Museum.  We knew we did not have anywhere near enough time to do it justice, but since admission is free (that in itself is amazing) we thought it couldn't hurt to at least see a few things. And I had two things I really wanted to see-- the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles.

 

Lobby of the British Museum

 

I wanted to get a picture of us all by the Rosetta Stone--
afterall we did all learn Swedish using Rosetta Stone :-)-- but the crowds
made that impossible.  It is hard to see but the writing in some of the languages
is amazingly tiny. I can't imagine carving all that into a rock.

 

Having been to the Parthenon, we wanted to see the sculptures that
were taken from it.

 

 

 

And our time in London was up. Back into the underground and then back to the airport to catch our flight.

Back to the USA

 

I imagined when we returned to the U.S. this summer, that I'd have lots of great material to write on-- you know, our impressions of the U.S. after being away. But I guess we've lived there too long and been away too short of a time to have any huge shifts in view point.

 

So this post is mostly for our Swedish friends.  A lot of people in Sweden picture the U.S. as New York or Los Angelos-- the big cities are what you see most in TV and movies.  Where we live in southwestern Virginia is pretty much the complete opposite of a big city. We never fully understood the term 'hillbilly' until we moved to Virginia.

 

Here's a taste of our US home and we'll see if I come up with any philosophical thoughts (great or otherwise) while I'm at it. 

 

First morning home, we hung our Swedish banner and our
hummingbird feeder on the front porch. I've missed my
hummingbird friends! I don't know if you can see our neighbors'
cows and horses across the street.It was raining so you also
can't see the mountains in the distance.

Happily we still had some hummingbirds around, even though
they haven't been getting the easy food while we've been gone.
This little guy came into the garage and then wouldn't leave.

Typical morning fog. It is foggy nearly every morning.

Now it's lightening up-- this is our back yard

We spent a lot of time mowing! This shot shows our huge, old
maple tree that we love.

Our street

Walking down our street at sunset

 Yes, we have neighbors, but they are quite spread apart. It was so quiet compared to our Sweden city house.  We really enjoyed returning to the peace. But I didn't enjoy having to get in the car and drive to get any time someone needed to go anywhere. I was reminded of how seldom I drive in Sweden. And the kids were reminded how much they like being able to transport themselves everywhere by bike rather than waiting on mom and dad all the time. But things are so much farther apart in southwest Virginia, and there aren't sidewalks, let alone bike paths.

I actually had to visit the gas station-- multiple times!

Dare I admit how happy we were to go to Wal-mart?
Ah, the selection and low prices!

 

And that is shopping in the US in a nutshell-- so much STUFF.We found we had very mixed feelings on that. On one hand, it felt a bit disturbing to see how much time, energy and money was spent acquiring more stuff. It was a bit disgusting. But on the other hand, we did a lot of shopping ourselves-- to get clothes, shoes, etc. at half what they would cost us in Sweden!
And we did indulge in some really junky US junk food that we hadn't had in a while.And oh, American pizza......

American pizza is still the best!

Very typical of our area-- cow pastures tucked between the
Blue Ridge and Appalachian mountains. It is hard to find even a spot
of flat ground--very hilly!

Hiking in the mountains

 

The Cascades-- a nearby waterfall

For some reason there are always tons of butterflies at the Cascades.
These are Virginia's state butterfly.

We took our canoes out on the New River a few times.
Here's our favorite spot to stop and swim and play.

 

Claytor Lake-- a large reservoir in our area

 What else, it was fun to catch fireflies, to have huge thunderstorms nearly afternoon, to actually feel hot now and then--even a little sunburn felt novel. We were reminded that in Virginia people ask "Where do you go to church?" not "You go to church?"(while looking strangely at you)

We could do without the poison ivy and ticks. :-)  And airport security! Yuck! The USA has the most annoying, unfriendly customs and security that we've encountered so far. Even Great Britian, which has pretty intense security, manages to do it more logically and cheerfully.