DAY TWO IN LONDON

We started the day with Chris’ feet being the worse for the previous day’s trekking all over Central London. Okay, maybe “all over” is an exaggeration, but it was a lot of walking. So we decided it was better to not walk as much (just taking the Tube gets you walking up and down hallways and stairs like you wouldn’t believe). We popped into the Starbucks at Paddington Station for some coffee, watched some of the people on their way into the day as well, then headed via the Tube to the British Museum. Once off the Tube we discovered a major problem—our map and the way we’d been interpreting the Tube map were backwards—we discovered that after we’d walked several blocks from the station—in the wrong direction.

Eventually, though we made it to the British Museum, only to discover that was a lot less BRITISH stuff in the museum than we’d anticipated. We did, however, see the Rosetta stone, the Elgin marbles, some cool Assyrian carvings, and well, just about everything (we may not have looked at every item but we walked in every room except the special exhibits). About half-way through we decided to try to get to Kensington Palace, so we went a bit faster through the upper floors. The visit was a good, but perhaps swift one, and we were back on the Tube on the way to the Queensway stop and Kensington Palace.

My mom and sister got us a member’s pass to the Historic Royal Palaces, which includes Kensington Palace, the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, etc. Kensington Palace is only partially open to the public (some “minor royals” now live there) and the exhibits are split between some of Princess Diana’s clothes, an exhibit on the last debutantes (surprisingly good, and Chris and I learned to waltz via painted steps on the floor) and preserved royal rooms from when the palace was used as the royal residence.

We got to see what was the throne room, and the various rooms used by kings and queens as staterooms and bedrooms. The art and design was remarkable, and the history of the rooms were cool as well—one of the rooms was where Victoria was wakened to learn she was queen. The visit was pretty cool, and among other things, Chris learned I’m much better at balancing a book on my head than he thought (another part of the debutantes exhibit).

We finished our time at Kensington Palace, and looking at the clock, decided to run back to the hotel to drop off our bag before heading to the BBC Radio theater for a show we’d gotten tickets for online—NewsJack. We took the Tube over to the area, checked in to make sure we know when and what time to line up for the show, and at the receptionist’s suggestion, hit up a local restaurant for dinner. The place, Ozer, was a great find and thanks to a great deal, we got good food for less than 10 pounds each. Definitely a good place.

Fortunately, we wandered back by the BBC earlier than we’d needed to que, and saw the line forming to go in. We stood for a bit till the let us in at 6:15 pm, and an hour later (after waiting in a holding room) we went into the theater. We had NO idea what to expect. Maybe, we thought, the Daily Show but on the radio? We also hoped we’d actually understand the humor, since we definitely felt our ignorance of British news and politics! But it was such a blast. More like a mix of the Daily Show with the sketch comedy of SNL. And fortunately, we did get, or could figure out, most of the humor. A great show, and for free! And cool to think we were present for a recorded show!

A delay on a Tube line sent us around a slightly different way on the Tube, but we made it back to Paddinton to grab some snacks (okay, we were sampling the British chocolate bars) and head back to the room. We spent the rest of the evening mapping out the coming days, watching the BBC and enjoying some tasty chocolates—and wondering why they don’t sell these in the US!