Soccer, Towers and the World's Biggest Toy Store

WARNING! The first part of this story contains significant rambling about professional and international soccer. Some of you (read girly-girls) might find it technically boring. If you’d like, feel free to skip down to where we go to the Tower of London and I ramble on about my issues with Colonialism and Greed instead of talking about how purty the Tower is.

You folks that have been paying attention to (non-American) football, at least over the past year or so, should know that England has a pretty strong reputation for their skills in the international pastime. That is to say, they did going into the World Cup competition last summer. We Yanks were scared to death to have to open the tournament against them, if you recall. But then, England’s keeper let Clint Dempsey’s shot slip through his fingers and we snuck out of the match with a tie, and honestly, things have been downhill for these boys ever since. In our second week over here, the national squad had a match with Montenegro (I’ll pause while you find it on Google maps…), yes, that Montenegro, with most of the English stars from the Premier League healthy and available. Most everyone was wondering just how many goals the home team would win by. I watched the game on the telly, along with the rest of the nation, and was just as unimpressed as said nation. Were it not for a Montenegrin shot that slammed into the crossbar rather than the net just below, England would have lost, as it was it ended in soccer’s standard 0-0 tie.

So, maybe that was part of the reason it was possible, and indeed rather easy, to get Sawyer and I tickets to the England/France match at Wembley Stadium in London last Wednesday. To test your World Cup memory yet again, do you recall France’s overwhelming humiliation in the competition? They were annihilated in the first round and sent home to an appalled nation that met their plane with bonfires and misery. This was unacceptable after they had reached the finals in the previous completion in 2006. Their program has not recovered from the summer, and they looked to be an easy target for the rebounding Englishmen.

But no one seemed to account for the dark clouds that the Grizzard boys can bring to a sporting event on this island. (Ref: Ryder Cup entry below)

We took the Wednesday afternoon fast train from Stoke to London Euston station and tubed over to our hotel near Paddington in Sussex Gardens. Every building on that street is a hotel if you ever come to visit, there are numerous reasonable choices and it’s a very convenient location. We left the girls to an Italian dinner in that area while Sawyer and I headed northeast toward Wembley. The rain was falling, of course, but the walk was relatively short, so we grabbed some dinner and headed in. If you’ve never seen Wembley, it is nearly covered but with a hole in the roof over the field, so the rain wasn’t a problem for spectators. It would prove to be a problem for the best English player and his club team though.

We stopped by for some refreshment, but, and take this as another travel tip for your visit, there are no grown-up beverages allowed in the seating area. So, if you buy two 20-ounce cups of anything grown-uppish, fifteen minutes before kickoff, keep in mind that you are not 22 years old anymore. And, if you set the last eight or so ounces in a very specific place you hope to find during your loo visit, remember that the clean up staff at Wembley is ridiculously efficient. I’m just sayin’, you know, hypothetically, for your benefit.

Anyhoo, it started slow, both teams getting their feet and England seemed to be keeping the action near the French goal, and then, as football matches tend to do, it all switched up and before anybody knew what hit ‘em, France was up 1-0. This was bad. We went into halftime that way. Then, before a third of the crowd was back from the loo after the half, France scored again. Unbelievable. The 18^th ranked team in the world against the (underachieving) sixth, and they were up 2-0 in the 50^th minute, how’s that for some numbers. The Frenchies continued to hold the lead with just minutes left, when England’s single best player, Gerrard, who is also Liverpool’s best player for his day job, went down with a hamstring injury on the wet turf. The bright side of this was: A) It drew more attention to Liverpool getting beat by my home team of Stoke last week, and B) It brought in Peter Crouch off the bench, who scored a goal less than 30 seconds after running onto the pitch. This gave us a bit of what turned out to be false hope, as France closed things out, sending us home in the rain. At any rate, it was a fantastic experience, and it has us fired up for our match that we will be attending in Stoke on Dec. 11. Our boys will be facing Blackpool, and there is a possibility that those boys might have to win that game to keep their hopes of remaining in the Premier League alive for next season.

To the Tower and the Toys!!

We got up Thursday morning and rode the rails to the Tower of London. If you recall, we had tried to go on our previous visit to London, but had run out of time and ended up just walking around the walls and the Tower Bridge. In continuing my advice about your pending visit to the UK, I suggest you try to visit the Tower of London before you go to Edinburgh Castle. Because, you see, it’s pretty much the same thing, but not up on top of a mountain overlooking a perfect medieval city. It’s beautiful, and worth doing, but, visit it before Edinburgh is all.

The main attraction at the Tower is the Crown Jewels of England. These are the huge scepters and orbs and, of course, crowns, and piles of gold and jewelry. (Remember, I warned you up top) This stirred up my emotions in a way that I wasn’t honestly prepared for. The Scottish jewels at Edinburgh took up a room. One crown, one scepter, one other royal stick of some kind. They had been hidden buried for a hundred years so that the English wouldn’t take them a few centuries back. Compared to this pile of extravagance it was nothing. This started to weigh more and more on my sensibilities.

I suppose the farthest you can get from being a monarchist is being an anarchist. I’m not an anarchist, but I do believe I could not possibly despise monarchy -- and particularly the imperialist brand that England was so instrumental in inventing -- much more thoroughly. I could not separate the sparkle and splash before me from the families, hearts and lives that were broken all over the world to allow them to all be assembled here before this moving sidewalk. There was no mention of the elephant that I seemed to be the only one seeing in the room, no expression of remorse, no “our bad, we probably didn’t need 12,000 diamonds in this particular crown.” Having to feel this in the context of the week’s top news story: “Royal Engagement – Prince William Finally Asks Kate,” it was just a little too much to take. The Royal Family is a sticky subject over here, but it never has been for me (as some folks who have heard me sing inappropriate songs late at night can attest). If they ever have the bad sense to elect me dictator of this particular island nation, every one of the Windsors better start packing that night. I simply find it incredible that this country can sit in the midst of the worst recession since WWII, with gold fetching over $1,300 an ounce, and decide that they can’t load up this room and head to the pawn shop and pay off the debt of the whole Commonwealth. And I’m sure if you turned Buckingham Palace into condos, they would probably bring in a tidy little monthly income for years to come. The ridiculousness is absolutely baffling. So, that was the visit to the Crown Jewels for me. Sawyer thought the swords were cool, and Savannah really liked the moving sidewalk. I don’t think they followed my rant completely, but they’ll get to hear it again someday.

We went on around to see where crazy old Henry VIII had the heads whacked off, and we saw where our state’s big daddy Sir Walter Raleigh got himself thrown in jail THREE times. I’m going to have to learn more about that dude. We saw the ravens that can’t leave the Tower or else the empire will fall (no I didn’t try to sneak one out, but you might note in the pictures that their wings are clipped to keep them from getting away to freedom). There was also some cute little video things the kids played with, such as where you get to pretend to be a ghost, or just under surveillance. There was also a couple of other jail rooms with some interesting graffiti from ancient prisoners, and they even had a gift shop. (That was sarcasm by the way, if the guv’ment were to lay an extra tax on gift shop c-r-a-p in this country, it would probably eat the deficit up too.)

We still had a little time after the Tower and another round of fish and chips, so we headed downtown to Hamley’s, which claims to be the world’s biggest toy store. The reason they claim this is because is has six floors in a city-block sized building, so, I’m guessing it’s the world’s biggest toy store. Check out the videos, but I’ll say it was worth a visit, and Sawyer and Savannah will probably tell you it’s the coolest place in England. I was still a little sour on the whole rampant capitalism thing, so I probably could have been biased in my assessment, but they did have puppet shows and radio control car areas that were free, so go Hamley’s!

I see that this entry has reached the 1,666-word level, so I think we’ll put off the jaunt up to my old stomping grounds in Oxford until tomorrow. As you may know, 1666 was the year that the Great Fire took down London, and they way I’ve been talking about the Queen, I may be burned at the stake myself. Hopefully, you'll hear from me tomorrow, if not, check the Tower.

CLICK HERE FOR THE ENGLAND-FRANCE, TOWER AND TOYSTORE PICS

Grab Ye’ Kilt, We’h Gon’ to Scotland

It wasn’t the smoothest trip north last Thursday. There’s not a direct train from Stoke on Trent to Edinburgh, and we bounced through Manchester and finally had to change trains completely at Carlisle near the northern border of England (a freight train was blocking the one and only track), but we finally reached our destination in a misty rain in the early afternoon. Before we had even stopped completely, you could tell we were in what was, though not officially another country, most definitely another world.

A giant castle looms high over the city on a cliff of volcanic rock. Almost every building looks as though it had stood rooted to its spot since 1473. Though it has the bustle of a modern city, Edinburgh has the charm and feel of a medieval outpost and centre of trade. It is truly breathtaking around every corner.

Now, before we go any further, let’s work on your pronunciation. It’s E-din-burr(a)h. It’s not that you want the ‘g’ to be lessened, you have to get rid of it altogether, but fill its space with that little ‘a’ in parentheses up there. And, honestly, that still doesn’t even get it. Scottish enunciation practically makes English a foreign language, especially to Suthun boys like myself.

I had taken a pair of khaki pants in the hope that I might be able to get in some golf in its ancestral home, but it became evident early on that we just had too much to do to experience Edinburgh’s treasures. We took off Friday morning and skirted past Holyrood Palace, where the Queen stays when she is in Scotland, and took in the Discovery Centre and its multi-dimensional take on the history of the earth. It is well done, and it almost makes up for the fact that its rugby ball-shaped building is a complete eyesore amongst the gothic backdrop of the city’s skyline. We saw the Scottish Parliament building, where their representatives meet and pretend that they are an independent country from Great Britain, and we got some great views of the geological wonders that hang over the city at the end opposite the castle. The cliffs and the extinct volcano known as Arthur’s Seat come into our story shortly.

CLICK HERE FOR ALL THE EDINBURGH PICTURES

We hiked the length of the Royal Mile, which really amounts to a much more pleasing version of the main street in Gatlinburg. There are no less than 30 shops where you can buy your own kilt, or man purse to go with your kilt, or Scotch shot glass, or various other sundries to commemorate your stay in the North. We even bought some fudge…and it was good.

We got to the castle and it turned out that we weren’t going to get to see much of it before closing time, so we decided to save it for tomorrow. We still took some pictures under the rising half-moon though.

Saturday turned out to be a whirlwind. We were up and scaling the heights of Arthur’s Seat by 10. The kids did great and just kept plugging along, and it was a genuine hike. The peak you can see in the photos is the highest point for many miles around, and we stood on the very tippy top. Even the castle looked small from up there. We could see across the Firth of Forth (the arm of the North Sea that provides Edinburgh’s access to the world), and probably halfway to Glasgow on the other side. When we got down and grabbed some second-rate Mexican food on the Royal Mile, we headed back to Edinburgh Castle.

The highlights included the Crown Jewels of Scotland that were worn back in the occasional days of independence that the country experienced, and we got to see the prison rooms where prisoners of war from the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars were held. It is a castle like no other I have ever seen.

I diverted from the family plan on our way home and took a bus out to the stadium on the off chance that I might be able to scalp a single to the international rugby showdown between the Scottish national team and the visiting squad from New Zealand. I had watched a little rugby here and there on the telly, but we hadn’t really gotten a firm grasp of the rules, or of the hierarchy of national skills, though I did see that England had stayed pretty close to New Zealand the week before but finally the ‘All Blacks’ had triumphed. It turns out that New Zealand was having an off day against England, and have actually been the best rugby team in the world since, well, since pretty much as long as there has been international rugby. I was able to get a ticket close to game time, and by the time I got to my front row seat at the equivalent of the fifty yard line (25 pounds! Singles are the way to go at scalping time), Scotland had kicked a penalty shot and taken a 3-0 lead on the All Blacks. This could be exciting! And it was, but for a different reason. It was exciting because I got to see the best rugby team in the world up close. New Zealand proceeded to decimate the hapless Scotsmen. It was 28-3 midway through the first half. It was 49-3 by the end. However, there was not enough room on the bench, so many of the New Zealand players were forced to sit at the far end of the row my scalped ticket was in. I’d bet there are people who feel the same way about rugby that I do about football that would be pretty darn pumped to be as close to the New Zealand stars as I was that Saturday night.

Wow, that’s a lot of Edinburgh information. I’ll spare you any further details except to say that on the train ride home on Sunday we saw fields of snow in the Lake Country and it was beautiful. We are on our way back to London Wednesday for more memories as Sawyer and I have tickets for England vs. France in football (soccer) at Wembley Stadium. We’ll be in the upper deck if you get it on the satellite. I think we’ll be under the cover of the roof, so don’t worry about the rain. Ta!

A Tale of One City Two Times (Part Two)

Return to Birmingham

As I said, we made plans to hop back on the train on Monday morning to return to Buhmingum for a Shakespeare for Kids production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We had read a storybook version of it (along with Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet), but we didn’t really know if we would be able to follow the real thing on stage. Luckily, it strayed heartily from the original language, but did a great job of retaining the essence of the story and the more famous quotes and nuances of Billy’s original.

I’m going to let Savannah tell us about the play while I play the ‘scwibe’…

Puck is the main character. He’s a troublemaker, and a sprite. In the play he had green facepaint all over him with a bit of black to look like leaves. Then it started with Theseus and Hippolyta, Theseus is the Duke of Athens and Hippolyta is his Amazon bride-to-be. Hermia’s father came out and told the Duke that Hermia has to marry Demetrius, because Demetrius approves the wedding and so does he. Hermia doesn’t approve because she loves Lysander, who loves her. Helena, Hermia’s lifelong friend, loves Demetrius, but there’s no hope for that because Demetrius is going to marry Hermia, like I just said. On Midsummer Night Eve, Lysander and Hermia run away into the woods. But before they ran away, Hermia told Helena that they were going. Helena told Demetrius that they had run away, so maybe he would change his mind and wish to marry her. But when she told Demetrius, with his sword, he ran finto the woods cursing revenge on Lysander. Helena followed, she pretended to be a dog so she could serve him. Lysander and Hermia, still in the woods, decided to rest a bit. Lysander wanted to sleep next to Hermia, but she said that since they weren’t married they shouldn’t sleep next to each other just yet.

Oberon, King of the Fairies and Titania, his queen, right then were in a quarrel, they didn’t care that it was pouring down rain or not. They were fighting over who should get a little Indian boy as a page. Then, after Titania and the boy left, Oberon had heard about an herb that in sleeping eyes of anyone it would make them fall in love with the first thing they see when they wake up. He told Puck to go and get this herb so he could get revenge on Titania to get the Indian boy. After Puck left for his errand, Oberon’s peace was shattered by seeing Demetrius and Helena tramping through the woods. Helena was still reminding Demetrius how much she loved and adored him. After they were out of Oberon’s sight, Puck returned from his errand. Titania was already asleep so Oberon squeezed the juice into Titania’s eyes. He said a tiny speech and told Puck to put the juice into a boy with Athenian clothing’s eyes, so he’d love that girl who followed behind him.

Puck didn’t know there were two Athenian boys in the woods and accidentally squeezed the juice into Lysander’s eyes. When Lysander woke, Helena was beside him after Demetrius had left her behind, and she was trying to make sure Lysander hadn’t been killed by Demetrius. When he saw Helena with the love juice in his eyes, he wanted to worship Helena and love her. Helena didn’t like the sound of this and she ran off to find Demetrius with Lysander running behind.

Anyway, the highlights are that these men were putting on a play for the Duke’s wedding, and one of the actors, Bottom, was hiding behind a bush during their rehearsal, and Puck gave him the head of a donkey. When he came out, the other actors fled. That’s when Titania awoke and saw Bottom. Through the love juice she wanted to love him, and she called her fairies to do stuff for him.

Oberon saw Helena with Lysander chasing after her, and he told Puck that he had squeezed the juice into the wrong eyes. Oberon told Puck to fix it all. After Puck fixed it, it was time for the Duke’s wedding, and they all woke up, and thought it was all a dream. The Duke saw Helena and Demetrius and Hermia and Lysander together and said that they should all get married when he got married too.

After the wedding, they had the play. The play was funny because they made a boy play the girl in the play and the boy put balloons under his dress that he wore. When she was trying to kill herself because her boyfriend had killed himself because he thought a lion had killed her, she killed herself by popping the balloons. After the play, everyone went to sleep again, and it stopped raining, and then the play ended.

Thanks Savannah.

As I mentioned, there was another bit of excitement on the train ride home. We were sitting next to a couple of guys that were twisting around their Rubik’s Cubes very quickly. We kept watching them and noticed that one of them was wearing a Rubik’s Cube competition shirt. We asked if we could make a video of them doing the Cube. He wasn’t happy with his 20 second time, his average is 12, but he has done it in NINE seconds before. They were on their way back to Manchester from a competition in Bristol, and pretty tired, so we accepted his apology…

We’re on our way to Edinburgh this weekend, we’ll keep you posted.

A Tale of One City Two Times (Part One)

BIRMINGHAM – (Oh please, it’s pronounced Buh-mean-gumm) The Grizzard family arrived in England’s second largest city on Thursday expecting an industrialized gray mass of buildings and depression. In fact, Birmingham has a beautiful downtown area, great walkways along their canals, and THE chocolate factory that inspired the creation of Mr. Willy Wonka himself!

We caught the train into Birmingham and spent the afternoon at the science museum learning more about recycling than we already knew, and we worked on our deductive reasoning in their exhibit where you catch the jewel thief. We played a bit in their miniature town set-up, and we made our own aliens suitable to live on the planets that we were given. Outside of the rain, it was tons o’ fun. We also grabbed the best Indian food we have had from the restaurant at our hotel (not the hotel restaurant, the Indian restaurant at our hotel, just to be clear). Finally, before bedtime, we flipped past a channel on the telly -- and this is especially for Sawyer’s teacher Miss Kristy and her ‘Disco Friday’ friends – watched a bit of the band that you can see on the video in the picture file.

CLICK HERE FOR OUR FIRST ROUND OF BIRMINGHAM PICS

We woke up Friday in great anticipation of a chocolate lunch at Cadbury World. This museum/factory tour is the biggest draw in Birmingham, and there were the tons of people there to prove it. They started handing us chocolate before we even walked in the door, and we proceeded to chocolate coma our way through the whole place. We learned the story of chocolate from its beginnings among the Mayans and Aztecs, and of how Cortes brought it back to Europe along with all the Aztec treasure in the 1500s. The mixture found its way to England and the shop of Mr. Cadbury right there in Birmingham, and then he added some milk to it, and before you know it, you got the best chocolate in the world. They also did an amazing job of treating their workers well and giving them nice places to live around the factory, this was all part of the Cadbury family’s Quaker tradition. Then they gave us more candy. There is a video and picture of the kids writing their names in chocolate, and then Sawyer in front of a crazy shadow machine that you have to check out. We closed the visit with – you guessed it – more chocolate…this time liquid chocolate mixed with your choice of other ingredients, but we took the safe route with marshmallows and rice krispies instead of things like sour gummy bears, yuck!

We had some more Indian food at the hotel as the rain continued, but we awoke to a sunny day for our ride home on Saturday. We got a few more pictures around the city centre and came home to rest up, because we would be heading back to Birmingham again on Monday for another taste of Mr. William Shakespeare at a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but that’s enough for now, check tomorrow for that story, including the train ride home next to the Rubik’s Cube professionals.

(That says Chester Zoo -- The Kids are in Charge Again)

CHESTER ZOO

By Sawyer and Savannah Grizzard

First we got on the bus to the train station, where we got a direct train to Chester. After we got off the train, we saw a free bus outside the train station that goes to the Chester bus station, which is exactly where we were going to go anyway. After we got to the bus station, we got on the bus to the Chester Zoo, which is, obviously, where we were going.

When we got to the zoo, we got our tickets to allow us in without breaking the law. When we got in (legally), we went to the Elephant thing. After that, we went to the monorail to get us to the important stuff. On the way, we saw cheetahs, lions, cranes, bats, ostriches, many different species of deer, monkeys, and other things with such weird names that no one I know knows how to pronounce them, such as sitatunga (even the computer doesn’t know that it exists!).

When we got off the monorail, we saw some more animals that we never knew existed(and some we did know existed that we didn’t expect would be there). We saw things like Giant otter, which make the most horrible, high-pitched noise, Chimpanzees, Orangutans, Gibbon monkeys, a Burmese Python -- the longest snake in the WORLD, iguanas, huge turtles, big fish, penguins, mongoose, lemurs, tropical birds, flamingos, camels, onagers, snakes, tigers, warthog, and even Komodo Dragons! And near the end, we went in this place that shows you how zoo vets take care of the animals. At the vet place we scanned stuffed monkeys’ wrists that have microchips to show who they are when scanned, listened to heart beats, and saw how the vets check the animals’ blood temperature. After that we went back to the entrance. We had a really Great time!

Daddy’s Halloween note: We forgot to take our camera to the zoo, but we do have some pictures from Halloween the night before. They do trick or treating here, but it is actually seen as more of an American tradition. Probably half the houses in our neighborhood gave out candy, but I think we managed to hit all of them. In case you can’t tell, Savannah went as a cat, and Sawyer went as a disgusting zombie killer (not killer of zombies, mind you, we’re very proud).

CLICK HERE FOR THE HALLOWEEN PICTURES

Recovering from London

We've had a pretty slow week, but we're getting ready for Halloween this evening...To help us gear up we went to a small festival at the Potteries Museum in the Hanley area of Stoke-on-Trent, our nearest big town. This area was famous for making pottery back in the day, and they are still trying to get people to come here and see the area because of it. Hence the museum, but they did have some cool stuff, like the owls...

We're going to try and get to the Cadbury factory in Birmingham this week. We're going to watch Willy Wonka on the telly to get geared up for it this afternoon. Talk to you soon, and remember how much we hate the Florida Gators....sigh.

A Kid's Eye View of London

I'm turning over the reins of the blog to the younger Grizzards this week, enjoy....Glenn

Click here for the photo album from London

LONDON by Savannah Grizzard

Hello, this is Savannah Grizzard. I will be talking about London.

On Wednesday I went with my mom to a concert. It was fun! After the concert, me and Lisa Grizzard had to get back on the tube (subway) to Stratford. We had to walk from the station to our hotel. On the walk, Mommy had to carry me, ‘cause it was cold. When we got to our hotel room, we knocked on the door, and Sawyer answered. Then Sawyer started chatting away about this dumb comedy show he watched while she was at the concert. Then we brushed our teeth, and went to bed. On Thursday, I went to Waterloo. I saw the London Eye, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Regents Park, and Trafalgar Square. You know what the London Eye is right? Good, Big Ben is a famous clock tower in London. Westminster Abbey is next to it. Abbey Road was not too far away, so we went there. Regents Park is a flower garden. It’s very big. Trafalgar Square has water fountains and lion sculptures. We ate at Garfunkel’s. It was very good. Then we went to the London Eye to ride it, but it was closed. So we went home to the hotel.

On Friday we went to the Tower Bridge, Tower of London, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and a Lion King play. First we went to St. Paul’s Cathedral .It has too many stairs—more than 500 of them! After that we went to see the Tower of London, and we walked around it to the Tower Bridge. Then we walked back to the tube (subway) to the hotel to clean off. Then we got on the tube again to go to the Lion King play. It was good, but the costumes were a bit cheesy.

On Saturday we went to South Kensington, The British Museum, and the London Eye. First we went to South Kensington, where Lisa Grizzard was taught in a basement. Then we got on the tube (subway) to the British Museum. At the British Museum, they had the Rosetta Stone . It was big. They also had Egyptian, African, Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, and a lot of other stuff. Then we got back on the tube (subway) to the London Eye to ride it. We stood in a short line to get our tickets. After we got our tickets, we waited in a line to get to our cart. Our cart number was 32. In fifteen minutes we were at the top. In another fifteen minutes, we were done. Then we went to a tube (subway) stop but it was closed so we got on another line to the hotel.

THE END!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LONDON!

Written by Sawyer Grizzard

Hey Everyone,

This is not Glenn, the guy who has been updating the blog so far. This is Sawyer Grizzard, the cool guy in all the pictures. We have recently gone to London, the capital of the United Kingdom. This is, obviously, what will be written here. So, let’s start with some jokes. So, there are three bandits, who are running from some policemen. The bandits- you probably want me to tell you about London now. So, it started like this: we went to the train station on the bus at about 3:00pm, we got our train tickets to go to London, we got on the train to go to London, we rode on the train to London, we got off the train in London, we went to the subway station in London, we got subway tickets in London- you probably know where we are by now. But, just in case, I’ll remind you. We are in London. So, after that, Savannah and my mom rushed off to a Selena Gomez concert, which is the reason we ended up in London in the first place. My dad and I just hauled the suitcases up to the hotel.

The next day, we went to Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, and Abbey Road. If you don’t know what Big Ben is, you should go see a doctor. Trafalgar Square is this place with a bunch of lion statues. Abbey Road is the place where the Beatles recorded a bunch of their songs. If you don’t know who the Beatles are, then you should really see a doctor. We also saw the London Eye. Now, if you don’t know what the London Eye is, the hospital is the place for you. We were going to ride it, but the dang thing closes at 8:00, and it was about 8:01 when we got to it. So, that’s the end of that day.

On Friday, we went to St. Paul’s Cathedral. St. Paul’s Cathedral is this church thing. It is very famous, apparently. It’s really cool, and it’s really tall, but you can’t get to the top without climbing a zillion stairs. So after that, we were all pooped. Then we ate lunch, and after that we walked around the Tower of London and across the Tower Bridge. After that we went to the hotel, changed into fancy clothes (NOT my idea!), ate dinner, and then went to this Lion King musical. It was good, but the costumes were horrible. Ex: Simba’s costume was just a lion hat and a tail tied to some guy’s butt (He had other clothes on, of course). That was Friday.

On Saturday, we went to South Kensington, which is where my mom went to school when she was over here, The British Museum, which is a British museum. And to end it all, we did the London Eye. It was really cool. And that, was the trip to London.

THE END