Day Three: Hyde and Seek

As I have been struggling to get the blog for Day 3 posted I find myself torn! I mean, we did ALOT of awesome stuff in that one day! And chances are we will, at some point, have some sort of uneventful day in which I will really want to still have an awesome picture to insert! However, in the interests of chronological accuracy and posterity and all that, I have decided to post it all as it happened, on Day 3, and in one massive blog.  So brace yourselves!


I finally slept more than 3 hours at a stretch for the first time in a week! I got a solid 9 hour night in, getting up around 9:30 am. Richard has no class on Tuesdays, and although it was supposed to be sunny, it dawned cloudy and cold. Which made it easier to buckle down and get some needed work done. However, Richard didn't have enough homework to keep him busy yet, so I had to deal with him bouncing around the house saying "can we go yet, can we go yet?" Around 12 noon I gave in (he made a very convincing argument that State Rooms of Buckingham Palace would only be open to tourists for 4 more days.) So we headed off on the tube for a day of adventure.  It was mostly off-the-cuff, as I hadn't spent any time planning it, and it turned out just fabulously! All we had to guide us was my Map-of-Wonder. I feel like this map needs its own nickname.  (For those of you who were not privileged enough to see it before we left, it's a big laminated fold out map that I have marked with approx. 150 color-coded stickers indicating sites and/or activities of interest to be done in London).

Letty's Map-O-Wonder

 As soon as we decided to leave, the sun got with the program and came out of hiding to start off an absolutely weather-perfect day- sunny and seventy degrees! I brought a jacket just in case, but wound up just carrying it around all day.  Still, best to be prepared with the quicksilver temperament of the English weather. We paused outside our apartment to snap quick pic of Tower Bridge sparkling in the sunlight, and a yacht making it's way out of St. Katharines Docks.  Still very surreal.

We took the tube to St. James, the closest tube station the Map-on-Steroids indicated to Buckingham Palace, and asked the first man we saw at street level which direction Buckingham palace was in. He looked at us like we were crazy "Well, I don't know!" he said. But with an English accent.  I feel like he should have known, but Richard says just because someone is British, doesn't mean they know the direction of the palace.  I countered with the fact that it was a freakin' HUGE building, a massive tourist draw, and if every homeless person in DC can point me towards the White House, the Brits ought to be capable of locating a flippin' royal palace! We agreed to disagree.

After some seeking, we did manage to locate the palace (no thanks to the locals) due to some handily placed street signs.  We were in a big hurry, so I passed up the crumpets I saw along the way. :)

Unfortunately, we discovered to our chagrin that the tickets were all sold out for the day.  A very nice man at the gate told us to come back and queue up early Wednesday or Thursday morning and we might get in, so that is the new plan.  But we did take advantage of the weather for some fabulous pics outside the the palace (just in case it's raining when we go back-lol).

After we left the palace we decided that Hyde park looked close enough to walk to, and we wanted to maximize the outdoors touristy stuff we did when we had good weather, so we set off along this nifty little street called Constitution Hill which they close on Sunday for royal outings, which took us through Green Park towards Hyde Park. On the way we met a sweet old British gentleman who snapped this photo for us.

As we approached the intersection at the end of Green Park we noted that the British, with their usual attention to detail, had left nothing to chance.

Between Green Park and Hyde Park stands the massive Commonwealth Memorial Gates, and just beyond them a monument to the Duke of Wellington.  Surrounding the Duke are four soldiers, attired in the dress uniforms of their particular regiment, representing the men who fought under Wellington.

From this vantage point we could see one of the South facing gates to Hyde park. We debated pausing to go thru the Wellington museum, but decided to save that for a rainy day, and on we continued into Hyde park. Deciding we felt extra chipper, we chose to walk the vertical length of the park, to take in Speaker's corner, where some of the 1st LDS missionaries preached the gospel in England in the 1800s. It still functions today as a place where legally anyone can have their say. Unfortunately, these days it appears to attract mostly fringe elements, who are, to put it bluntly, basically crazy. This is, however, hearsay. We discovered once we arrived, limping and bushed, at the Northeast corner of the park, that the Speaker's corner is only 'open for business and/or harangues on Sundays. We plan to return to verify the data.  Ah, return via the tube, that is.

We had long since emptied the water bottle we brought along.  Spotting a drinking fountain in the distance we picked up our pace, hurrying towards blessed relief. Only to discover to our chagrin that it was a horse drinking fountain.  Well good to know all those Hyde Park Horsies can stay nice and hydrated! After staring glumly at the fountain for a bit, we continued on our journey.

Letty's failure to properly break in her shoes had left her with some pretty sizeable blisters, so we decided to go to our next Hyde park destination cross-country, or cross-park. I stripped off my shoes and walked barefoot in the cushy grass.  Weaving our way amongstpicnic-ers in the shady parts, we eventually fetched up against the Serpentine. (For all you regency novel fans, this is where those debutants were always being rowed to and fro...). So of course Letty talked her very own gallant suitor into hiring a rowboat and rowing her along the Serpentine as well!

After a leisurely hour on the Serpentine, we decided to attempt walking again, thinking we might head toward the Kensington Palace and maybe see the Kensington Roof Gardens. But Letty only got a few steps before the blisters made their presence felt. She toughed it along for a few hundred yards, until she spotted a Barclays Bike Rack. We had been toying with the idea of finding out more about them, but, sufficiently motivated, now seemed like a really great time. Turns out, the Barclay Bicycle Scheme has racks of bikes installed every 1/2 mile or so throughout the major downtown/tourist suburbs of London. For just 1 pd a day, a person can rent and ride these bikes all day long. The only catch is, you have to return to some kind of docking station every 30 minutes and switch out to a new bike, or you start getting charged extended rental fees, which are quite high. However, if you are clever enough, you can get just about anywhere in London, simply riding from station to station, and switching out your bikes every 30 minutes.  Kensington was looking farther away each step, so we mounted up and headed out of Hyde Park on the Great Albert Road.

We got a wee bit lost looking for a docking station, and finally found one just barely in time to squeak in under the 30 minute deadline. (For those who appreciate irony, it was back at the entrance to Hyde Park.) We switched out our bikes, got a new 30 minute timer, rode back the way we had come, and located the next bike depot just by the Prince Albert Monument and Royal Albert Hall.

Royal Albert Hall-A Tour and Concert planned here for later in our stay!

Prince Albert Memorial-to one of the few happy marriages in the history of the British Monarchy!

My Own Royal Husband!

Deciding we were done with the bike adventures for the day, we hopped a bus headed toward one of the restaurants on my handy-dandy Map.  It was closed.  So we hopped a train towards Edgeware road, the Arab district to try some of the recommended shishkabobs, before heading to school for some homework time (they are both in vaguely the same direction).  We got a bit lost, which seems to be the theme of the day, but finally resorted to asking 3 or 4 different people on the street where to eat. When the same response was repeated 3 times, we knew we were on to something.  Eventually we did find ‘Helen Café,’ and although we couldn’t really read the menu or understand the cook, we figured out one was chicken and one was lamb, of whatever we were getting. (Shawarma, anyone?).  So we got one of each, and it was AMAZING!!

Unfortunately by then it was also very late, and we turned out to have walked the opposite direction of the school, so we just grabbed the next bus to the next tube station and headed home. It was a crazy, fun, gorgeous day filled with adventures that I had with my best friend. What an absolutely perfect moment!

Lessons Learned:
1. Not all Brits know where Buckingham Palace is
2. Always break in your walking shoes, even if they are a 'comfort' brand
3. In England, horses rank higher than humans
4. Letty cannot row a boat
5. The Barclay Bicycle depots are not always where they say they are on the map
6. Getting lost often only leads you to an even better adventure
7. Shawarma is really, really good!