I spy with my little eye... London

We returned from North Carolina for a final two weeks of preparations in Florida before our departure to London. It was then that the storm clouds began to brew. My parents left for Europe. We were on our own. We began packing the bags and with only a couple of days left, it became apparent that our 12 luggage allowance would fall shy of what we needed to transport all of our personal effects. Danny began to stress about the packing. I was fighting apprehension about the travel- 4 kids, two lay overs, 20 hours in flight, no sleep. I don't travel well. Four days before our departure, I get a phone call letting me know that my dear friend Annette had committed suicide. Her funeral would be held in Miami, a couple of hours before we had to be at the airport.

I was able to go to the funeral though I could not stay for the service. It was important to me to be there for multiple reasons and I don't regret going, though it was at a cost. Danny had to finish the packing, (or really, select what would be left behind,) feed the kids, run the last minute errands, hurricane-prep the house, and load the van without me. Danny's mom drove me from the funeral to the airport where we met up with Danny, who arrived with eyes unfocused, hands trembling, overheating in his coat. The next few hours included several mishaps, frustrations, and tense encounters with the American Airlines staff, that decided on this day of days, to be punctilious to the extreme, and we arrived at the gate without a second to spare, boarding directly. "That was," Danny later confessed, "my worst nightmare." We made it....more or less. There may have been less of Danny after the ordeal was over.

We have been staying at the Hilton London Paddington - a lovely hotel that is about a 10 minute walk from Hyde Park. We arrived on a morning flight but didn't have the stamina to go exploring after we checked in so we took a short nap before grabbing hop on/hop off bus tickets for what was left of the afternoon. The bus took us in a circuit that hit dozens of major landmarks, historic churches, monuments, and culturally significant locations but we just cruised, the temperature reading 69 degrees but feeling much colder when the air was whipping and the sun was hidden.

 

Noemie in particular was living a dream. It didn't occur to me how invested in British culture my bookish history buff was until I saw the rapture on her face, beginning with Paddington Station itself. Kings Cross Station of Harry Potter, Hyde Park from series such as Peter and the Star Catchers or Epic Order of the Seven, St Paul's Cathedral from Mary Poppins, Sherlock Holmes' Baker Street, the Peter Pan statue... Charles Dickens even had a namesake pub. She has loved London and has said she would now like to consider Oxford as a contender for her grad school prospects.

Gigi got to see the London Eye that she read about at the library a few weeks ago. We did disembark once at the southeast corner of Hyde Park where Tovi was greeted by a statue of Achilles which he had recently read about in a Nate the Great book.

The kids plopped on the grass like true Europeans, to take in the splendor of the moment.

We walked back to our hotel, passing picturesque buildings with their fancy shmancy knobs and knockers, and plane trees filtering the afternoon sun through broad, glowing green leaves.

At every street we'd have to remind ourselves to look left... no... right! before we crossed and even then had a few close calls with traffic that ran contrary to our unconscious expectations. I marveled at the number of middle eastern eyes that watched us from behind niqabs. We hear very little English here, come to think of it. This is no longer, really, the London of Beatrix Potter, Wilburforce, or even Churchill. In that way, it's a little surreal.

  Our second day we took "The Tube," and Gigi declared that she would not "mind the gap" one bit.

 The highlight of our day was the Tower of London. Again, Noemie was beside herself. King Henry the VIII, you may already know, is her favorite historical personality to study, and at night she quizzes Gigi on the names of all his wives. Ask Gigi if you don't believe me. London is like Noemie's personal Disney World.

Once inside the grounds, we joined a group led by a yeoman to survey the buildings of the fortress including the Traitor's Gate through which prisoners were once brought in, the Tower Hills where King Henry VIII's aforementioned wives met their untimely deaths, and the Bloody Tower where princes Edward and Richard were believed to have been murdered when they were Dominic and Tovi's ages respectively.

After the tour, we visited the Royal Armouries housed in the White Tower (which is, for the record, outstanding) and caught a glimpse of the legendary ravens of the Tower.

From the Tower, our wanderings took us to a tour of the Museum of the Order of St John, scrambling up the bronze lions at Trafalgar Square, a stop at Jubilee Gardens and a stroll along the Thames where we passed through some the street-side entertainment, including a group of acrobatic Jamaicans who incorporated Gigi into their act.

This morning we went early to the British Museum where we were meeting up with a guide from Christian Heritage Tours that does special tours of London that focus on sites that are significant to Biblical or church history and their resulting legacy, such as abolition, free education, and public health. In our case, we were part of a group that was combing the British Museum treasures for items of Biblical relevance, including artifacts from Ur (such as the "Standard of Ur" which Dominic and Noemie recalled from a unit on art history), an obelisk that depicted Israel's King Jehu, olive trays that would have been served by a Babylonian cupbearer such as Nehemiah, and chunks of the Parthenon which would have adorned the temple across from the Areopagus where Paul preached to the Romans about the "unknown god."

My favorite part of the tour was when the tour guide ceded the floor to Noemie and she gave a brilliant, impromptu exposition on the Taylor Prism from her personal studies.

 From the Museum we went to Buckingham Palace where the kids each got a personal interactive video guide that led them through the many staterooms. This was Gigi's favorite part of the day. She really connected with the program and went very slowly and methodically through the content. I'd never seen her so focused! The boys ran on ahead on their own and Danny was consequently reprimanded by the Palace staff, so we all had ice cream afterward to console our wounded egos. We made one last stop (for me) at Westminster Abbey where Gigi was insistent that she had to find a throne. I told her that the Abbey was a church and that there probably wasn't a throne there. She countered that there had to be a throne because all the coronations of the monarchy have taken place at Westminster since William the Conqueror. The Buckingham Palace video guide told her so. Well then!

We are now back at the hotel, sore as can be and preparing for our departure tomorrow. Danny is looking anxious at the prospect of another airport transit. I don't expect we will find medieval cathedrals or fortresses in Swaziland. But all the same, Adieu! Auf wiedersehen! Gesundheit! Farewell! 

Swaziland, here we come.