London with Cliff

A completely random note: Last night I had a dream that I was in Wegmans. It looks like Tesco's inferiority has finally gotten to me! It's not like Wegmans is the number1 supermarket in the United States or anything like that!

Anyways, I had a great time with Cliff when he came to visit a few weeks ago! Seeing his reaction to London made me laugh, but it also reminded me of my first time seeing the city. This time around I was like, "Big Ben? Whatever..." but re-reading my first blog entry on London I can see that I was as excited as he was! And there's so much to do that I still saw so many things that I hadn't before. Also, after having navigated the city on my own (sometimes with unintentionally amusing results, as Cliff wrote about in his blog), I now feel much more confident that I actually know the city. Not to mention that the weather was much better! The long, wet, and gray English winter turned into a gorgeous, green English spring. Our hostel was right next to Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, so we in the right place for springtime flowers. Of course, I think Cliff was more interested in the posh cars... ;) Our hostel was really nice as well, the Astor chain does a good job.



Our first day was spent sightseeing. The highlight for me was the Palm Sunday service in Westminster Abbey. Not only was it an impressive church (we saw several tombs of famous kings) but the High Church Anglican service was extraordinary. They even had soloists and a full choir sing the Gospel reading!



The next day we got out of the city and went to see Windsor Castle, the oldest occupied castle in the world. Sadly the Queen was not there (or maybe happily, since had she been there we wouldn't have been allowed in) but we did see magnificent state rooms that rivaled Versailles in opulence. They also had Queen Mary's doll house, which is far from a child's toy. It was huge, and even had working electricity and running water! The town of Windsor itself is lovely and quaint, right next to the Thames. Eton College is also right down the road from the castle.



We also saw lots of London's museums. Even though I'd already been there a couple of times by that point, you can't miss the British museum so I took Cliff there and even saw a couple of new things myself! We also caught the Natural History Museum, which was cool--dinosaur bones and giant whales hanging from the ceiling and all that. A creepy little museum Cliff wanted to see was the Hunterian Museum, which was really cool. Hunter was an eighteenth century surgeon who liked to collect specimens and preserve them in jars. Some of them looked like aliens! Cool!

Finally, the last day we saw Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, which looked much nicer this time with all the flowers blooming then the desolate place it was in the winter. Some of the gems we found were the Peter Pan statue and Princess Diana's Memorial Fountain. Her monument wasn't what I expected; it was modern and simple, but still really nice.





I can't wait to go and return the favor by visiting Cliff in Sweden in a few weeks! Watch out, Scandinavia... ;)