the Sun Never Sets on the British Empire!...so when do we get to nap then?

Hey Yankees!

Day four in LondonTown, and Jen and I still haven’t gotten sick of each other! And there’s MORE good news: we had another lovely day of sightseeing. (Today’s without one single error navigating the tube or busses!)

We visited Camden Market straight from the hotel. Camden Market is the fourth largest London tourist destination, we can attest to this stat after our shoppescapade this morning. It kind of had a Venice Beach feel, with vendors selling artwork, vintage clothing, knick-knacks, paddy-wacks, and every type of souvenir one could possibly imagine! ‘Twas beautiful!

We went to the British Museum from the market. Jen had downloaded Rick Steve’s (the travel guru) walking tour of the Museum, so we tried it out and it was very informative. We followed along in a Rick Steve’s London Travel Guide and learned more than during 6 years, K-5^th grades, of California Public Elementary School drilling. And the internal architecture of the building was amazing. Great minds like Virginia Woolf used “the Great Hall” as a reading space. Marx used it while forming his ideas about communism! (So we scowled while being astounded by the spaces austere beauty.) We saw mummies and a piece of Egypt’s Sphinx’s beard, and the Roman Marbles from the Parthenon! (And we’re going to go see it in real life in a few weeks! Exciting much?! I think so!!)

We went and rested Jen’s achin’ feet at a cute little café near the Museum before the Jack the Ripper Tour (a bus ride and a couple of tube stops away…before walking for 2.5 hrs straight!) We walked all over the City of London and learned a lot of history about that space (around the Tower of London). (English history is violent!) Our tour guide has written two books on JTR and knew everything about everything. Our group was mostly American, so there was also a spirit of camaraderie in that. It was actually kind of nice. Our guide was actually pretty funny for a historian. Jen bought one of his books and he signed it for her. She was very happy.

Since it was after eleven by this point, we climbed our bruised and broken bodies into the nearest tube station on Liverpool Street and made our way back to the hostel.

Today (I finished writing this entry the morning after I started it…hope that I didn’t mess up tenses too much. Sorry!) We’re heading out to Notting Hill to look at the area, then over to Piccadilly Station to buy our train tickets from Paris to Venice, then we’re headed over to Westminster to look at Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament with Big Ben (which actually refers to the bell inside named ‘Ben’, not the bell tower itself. Interesting!). Then we head back up to the Tower of London area to see St. Paul’s Cathedral. Hopefully we will get most of that done!

Missing everyone terribly! Thanks for checkin’ in here!

Cheers!