London

Day 1: Instead of napping we decided to use the ‘force your body to time shift’ approach to jet lag – after checking into our apartment we went to breakfast and started sightseeing.

Apartment on Curzon Street

Our apartment is on Curzon Street in Mayfair – it’s small, but nice and very convenient to the tube; it’s also across the street from Shepherd Market, a small area with shops and restaurants. The spot we chose for breakfast was okay, but we’re not really used to runny eggs and English style bacon and hash browns. Tomorrow we’ll try eating in, though we also found some nice pastry cafes right across the street.

Walking through Green Park

Guard at Buckingham Palace

Burning off the bacon, we walked through Green Park and past Buckingham Palace, then jumped the “Original Tour” double decker bus to get situated and oriented to the city, disembarking for the Tower of London, then rejoining for the rest of the loop afterwards.

Kevin and Eric atop the tour bus

The tour of the Tower of London was quite entertaining – they are hosted by Yomen of the Guard who live within the walls. We learned about many beheadings, mucky moats, how to become a Beefeater, and nuances of armor.

Beefeater, Yeoman Warder and Tourguide

After the rest of the bus tour, including three loops through Trafalgar Square (where pigeons have been eradicated by fining humans for feeding them and sicking hawks on the birds that choose to stick around anyway), we returned home for a nap.

Late that afternoon a quick two stop ride in the tube took us back to the Thames for a ride on the London Eye. Even after 23 years of marriage I wasn’t aware of the depth of Sarah’s discomfort with heights until I asked her to take my picture near the top of the loop. Oops.

View from the top of the loop of the London Eye

We had a very nice meal at an Italian restaurant near the Eye, then hopped the tube for home. Time to finally get caught up on some of that sleep!

Parliament Building

Day 2: Coffee and hot chocolate from across the street and a heaping bowl of Special K helped us get adjusted to the new day, hopefully fooling us into accepting local time at 7am. We were picked up at 8:30 by our guide for our legal tour of London – first stop: Parliament.

Upon entering the iconic Houses of Parliament, we were met by David Stollery, who is the Senior Doorkeeper for the House of Lords. As a Doorkeeper, he helps keep the House running smoothly. This includes tracking attendance (which allows the Lords to get reimbursed for their expenses!), managing the flow of messages while the House is in session and general organization and security. Mr. Stollery spent almost two hours with us, walking us through the chambers of the House of Lords and House of Commons while explaining how the Parliament of British Government operates and the role of the two Houses. He also participates in many of the ceremonies, and entertained us with very rich descriptions of the traditions behind them.

In Parliament with David Stollery and our tour guide, Oola

Mr. Stollery also explained the process to observe the Houses in session – something we’re planning to return to do on Wednesday.

Entrance to the Supreme Court

In 2009, the United Kingdom created a Supreme Court, replacing the Appellate Committee from the House of Lords as a separate and independent court. We visited their new facilities in the Middlesex Guildhall, across the street from Parliament. Since they weren’t in session we were able to enter the court rooms (when they are in session you can observe the court from behind a glass wall).

Kevin in the Supreme Court Chambers

After Parliament and the Supreme Court we visited Inns of the Court, a collection of legal encampments where students live, study and intern at law firms that are headquartered within the Inns. The Inns were originally created just outside the city walls, or “bar”, which is where the term Bar and Barister originated. There are a number of Inns, the most famous to us Commoners would be the Temple Inn, home of the Knights of Templar and location for a significant clue in “The DaVinci Code.”

We toured the Royal Courts of Justice – the Appellate Court was closed, but we were able to sit in on a portion of a hearing involving closing arguments in an estate challenge. The Baristers were in robes and wigs, though the Judge was wearing his own hair.

After a pub lunch we traveled to London’s city center and visited the City Hall, a very modern building next to the Tower Bridge. The building was designed by Norman Foster and has a unique circular design of offset layers of floors – one common nickname for the building is the “Leaning Tower of Pizza.”

London City Hall

Inside the City Hall is an enormous floor map of London and its surrounding areas. We were told that London City is only a square mile in area, but “if you look you can see that it isn’t really square at all.” In other math related news, we were also told that Norman Foster’s other building in London (affectionately known as “The Gerkin” because of its resemblance to a giant standing pickle) “is as wide as it is tall, though it looks much taller than that.” In fact, its height is roughly equivalent to its circumference, not its width, making it three times taller than it is ‘wide’. Width, I suppose, is a difficult concept for some to get their arms around.

Eric’s friend and classmate, Ian, is in London for a school project and joined us for dinner along the Thames. We needed to be across the river at 9:30pm for the Tower Keys Ceremony, and headed over at 9:00pm with a comfortable margin for the ten minute walk – then a cruise ship decided to leave port through the bridge. It was fun standing next to the Tower Bridge while it opened, and we raced up the stairs and stood by the lifted roadway as the cruise ship sailed by; the ship’s passengers even higher up waved down at us.

Tower Bridge at night, open

As fun as that was, it used up almost all of our margin time to make it to the Tower of London gate for the ceremony. The Tower Keys Ceremony is the longest continuous running ceremony in the world, having now happened every single day for over 700 years. It is a military ceremony for locking the huge gates to the London Tower each evening, and if you are lucky enough to see it, as we were, you also end up locked inside. It is near impossible to enter the grounds after that, but if you’re polite and don’t misbehave your Yeoman tour guide will let you out through a door in the gates afterwards.

Sagging skinny jeans

Most of London was wonderfully dressed, and in fact we missed some of the punk culture that we’ve seen here before. But this was something new – sagging from the US mixed with classic London skinny jeans.

Getting to Know London

Legal Tour, Part 1: Parliament

Legal Tour, Part 2:

Tower Bridge and Tower Keys Ceremony

London Fashion