Last day in London

We woke up pretty early this morning, which was surprising since last night was such a late night. We went out for our last day in London. It was sunny and gorgeous, so it was a good note to end on (although we really do love the rain, and it never got in our way). We walked to some museums that were near where we're staying. The Victoria and Albert museum and the Museum of Natural History.

Now, neither Doug nor I are museum people, which works in our favor. We like to just walk through them and pick what we want to read. We go through them pretty quickly, which you might argue means that we don't learn much. And you're probably right. But most of the information (at least in the Natural History museum) is still pretty fresh in my mind. Maybe I'll like museums as I get older, but I've never really liked them. I still remember being in D.C. and waiting for my mom and Devonna to be done with exhibits when it felt like I'd been done with them forever. So I'm glad that Doug is like me and that neither of us felt like we were missing out.

The Victoria and Albert Museum. It was mainly art and design. We saw some Raphaels and lots of Tapestries.

The outside of the building


The entry had a really cool glass piece:



Natural History Museum. We loved this building. It was amazing how detailed the architecture was






Waiting outside to get in. He wasn't even posing lol


Such amazing architecture!


Inside the building. Dinosaur! Doug was excited. Unfortunately their dinosaur exhibit was closed...until tomorrow...haha


Cool escalator that went through the bottom of the earth. There wasn't much to take pictures of, which is why we don't have much. They did have an earthquake simulator though! We did agree that it is a much deeper rumbling than what they could produce, and that we had never been in one as bad as the one they were simulating (Kona, 1995?).



Then we walked back to Hyde Park and sat next to the Serpentine. A priest sat next to us on our bench and of course Doug struck up a conversation. He had been to a lot of the States (mainly the east coast, but also Louisiana) and liked Chicago the best. He also told us that Paris is more compact so that walking around would be easier. He asked what our favorite place had been and we told him St. Paul's and Hyde Park.

Albert Memorial in Hyde Park


I forgot the name of the building...but it looked cool!. Some kind of venue I think


Loved the clouds over the lake




Kind of blurry, but Constables!


They have these helpful directions at all major crosswalks. It really is helpful because you forget what direction traffic should be coming from!



We ended our day by getting a take and bake pizza from a grocery store and are making it now. We leave for Paris early tomorrow. We have to catch our plane at six in the morning, and we have an hour bus ride to get to the right airport. So our bus is leaving at 3 a.m. and we have to leave the flat at 2:15 since we're walking to the bus station and want to leave plenty of time. So we have some re-packing to do and making sure that everything ready before we go to bed and try to get some sleep. We've designated tomorrow as a rest day though and probably won't really explore Paris till Sunday. We don't want to exhaust ourselves on the second destination, and we have more time for rest in Paris than we will for our other destinations.

We don't know what our internet status will be in Paris, or even Brussels. In Amsterdam we're supposed to have free internet. So if we don't update, that's why. Lack of internet :)