N and N's New Adventure: Day 25: June 19

Day 25. June 19, 2012. Tuesday

Happy Anniversary to us.. 41 years

We took the number 24 bus to Trafalger Square. We had to take some new pictures of Lord Nelson. He certainly does have a tall monument. The ship in the bottle monument is gone. I don't know what they did with it. It was far from little. In its place they have a statue of a rocking horse being ridden by someone famous of course.

After the pictures, we roamed uphill to find the National Portrait Gallery. Since they don't allow photos, I did not get any photos of any of the portraits. It continues to fascinate me the numbers of people who fail to comply with the rules and take pictures anyway. I am always afraid they will take my camera and me away. The portrait gallery contains many of the original portraits that you see in history books. They also had portraits of many early authors and scientists. We did the early history and the Victorians.

We then made our way to Covent Garden stopping on the way to play with the postage machine. We conquered the postage machine and found our way to Covent Gardens. We wandered through the stalls of hand crafted items.....way too many beautiful things. We found several items that we eventually went back and purchased.

We made our way outside and found a food stall selling jacket potatoes, aka baked potatoes. The Brits and the Scots seem to have an affinity for wanting to put things like tuna and sweet corn, chili and cheese, chicken salad and a cheese and baked bean combination on their potatoes. All I really wanted was a butter and sour cream potato. The fellow running the jacket potato stand said he would make it the way I wanted. It was wonderful. We had potatoes and a Coke sitting outside on a curb in Covent Garden.

After lunch we entered and paid our admission fee to the London Transport Museum. The museum had several themes, one the gradual replacement of horse drawn coaches with coaches on rails still pulled by horse,and then with electric and later gasoline powered busses. Less attention was paid to the hackney cab of Sherlock Holmes fame. A second theme was the-redevelopment of the subway system, first with steam power and shallow tunnels, a cut and recover system, and then with electric power deep tunnels, and escalators. This part of the exhibit spent a good deal of time with the development of metro land, the suburbs connected by the new rail system to London city centre. A third theme was the modern rationalization of the bus system and the design of the standard cab. Finally, there was a small exhibit about transportation for the Olympics and the new cable car ride in Greenwich.

When we finished in the museum, we went through Covent Garden where Nancy bought a smaller purse and a pair of amber earrings for her anniversary. Then we took a short walk to the bus and a ride to Westminster Abbey. We arrived with only 20 minutes to spare, paid our money and went in. Westminster Abbey is very impressive. There are many famous people and many not so famous people also buried in the Cathedral. We saw queen Elizabeth I's tomb and across the hall the equally grand tomb of Mary Queen of Scots, whose execution had been ordered by Elizabeth. When James I (James VI of Scotland) succeeded Elizabeth, he ordered the tomb of his mother to be the equal of Elizabeth, and so it is. We saw the final resting places of Chaucer, Charles Dickens, George Elliot, AKA Mary Ann Evans of Silas Marner fame. We also trod upon Oliver Cromwell. We left the building after an hour, more than we expected, as they were warming up the organ for the evening service. Then pushing our weary feet to the bus, we headed for the cubicle we call home.

We found right next to the bus stop a Brazilian genre restaurant and gave it a try. Buffet for salad and some hot dishes, and meat of various cuts delivered to your table. We had roast beef, steak, chicken breast, some pork, and beef tenderloin. It tasted good, just meat--no sauces or coatings, our only flavoring was salt. We ate till we were full, mostly meat, as the buffet didn't appeal much. The shocker was the bill--a sneaky, in the fine print cover charge of 10% we were not happy. We paid our bill, and let them find most of their tip in that service charge. Across the street to the Sainbury's for some cold drinks and then two blocks to the cubicle. Our feet barely made it. Some TV and planning for tomorrow and then lights out.

Steps: 19,232