{"id":132,"date":"2012-06-16T15:13:58","date_gmt":"2012-06-16T20:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/?p=132"},"modified":"2012-07-09T00:06:19","modified_gmt":"2012-07-09T05:06:19","slug":"london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/?p=132","title":{"rendered":"London!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday,\u00a0 June 16th<\/sup><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Today we arrived in London!\u00a0 We left Barnsdale Hall early, because Kevin\u2019s fencing seminar at the Wallace Collection started at 10:30.\u00a0\u00a0 Getting to London and returning the car was uneventful, and we got a taxi into the city because it was almost cheaper than train tickets for two, and much easier with our luggage (especially because the big bag has gotten very heavy\u2026)<\/p>\n

We\u2019re staying in the Astons Apartments, which is an adorable set of buildings in Kensington.\u00a0 Since we got into London earlier than their check in time, we left the luggage with them and headed for the Underground so Kevin could get to the Wallace collection.\u00a0 After a bit of confusion, we found the place, and Kevin headed out.\u00a0 I kept walking, and went for quite the wander around Kensington.\u00a0 Now, Kevin turned on the international data plan on his phone and I did not, so I didn\u2019t really have a clue where I was, or where I was going.<\/p>\n

I found my way to Kensington Park, which is somehow larger than you would expect.\u00a0 Like, even Central Park in NYC, standing on one side, you can see where the park ends.\u00a0\u00a0 Not here.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure though, if that says more about the size of the park, or the height of the buildings.\u00a0 In Kensington Park, there is Kensington Palace, a rather uninspiring brick building, though with nice gardens.\u00a0 There is also a rather garish memorial to Prince Albert by Queen Victoria.\u00a0 It\u2019s huge, and very\u2026 gold- covered. It stands sort of caddy-whompus to the Royal Albert Hall, a round music hall.\u00a0 I kept going, and discovered some signage which pointed me towards a clot of museums, including the V&A, the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum and a few other smaller ones, like one with a bunch of maps, and something about music.\u00a0 Admission to most of the major museums in London is free, so I decided to check out the Museum of Natural History.\u00a0 (We will be going back to the V&A, but I knew that Kevin wanted to see that stuff too.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Royal Albert Hall, across from Kensington Park<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Albert Memorial, put up by Queen Victoria.<\/p><\/div>\n

The museum has a few different areas, and I managed to enter though the smaller side entrance, into the Earth section.\u00a0 It was pretty cool, because the entrance hall is a giant three story escalator, through a model of the Earth.\u00a0 They had a pretty cool exhibit on volcanoes, focusing on the eruption of Pinatubo, and a sort of funny one on earthquakes, focusing on an earthquake in Japan recently, but not the most recent one.\u00a0 They had an earthquake simulator room, made up to look like a Japanese supermarket, but when it got going, it didn\u2019t really feel much like an earthquake.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

This was the entrance to the Geology Wing. It’s newer than the other portions of the museum, and was pretty cool. They had an earthquake simulator! Haven’t been on one of those in ages (though I’m not sure how realistic it was… Heck, not sure how realistic the old one was, either, but I remember it being a lot scarier)<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The dinosaur in the main hall of the Natural History Museum. His name is Dippy.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Ok, very hard to get a picture of all of this, but they had a mammal hall, and it was PACKED to the ceiling with all different kinds of mammals, including at least 4 whale skeletons, and a model of a blue whale. Whales are big. That is all.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The main hall, looking from the top gallery. The statue in the middle of the staircase is Charles Darwin.<\/p><\/div>\n

They also had some very neat rock specimens on display, like pieces of pillow lava, and Pelee\u2019s Hair.\u00a0 I have to say, some parts of the museum felt a bit outdated, but their specimen collection is AWESOME.\u00a0 Once I\u2019d finished in the Earth section, I made it out into what is actually the main entrance room.\u00a0 What a beautiful room!\u00a0 Brick, and columns and awesome staircases, and a giant dinosaur skeleton in the middle.\u00a0 I took a quick trip through a few other exhibits, but it was getting close to 3:30, and it was pretty crowded.\u00a0 Kevin\u2019s seminar thing was over at 4:30, and we\u2019d agreed to meet at our room, so I wanted to get checked in and so on.<\/p>\n

This is where I really should have thought through the \u201chow to get home\u201d plan a little more thoroughly before wandering off with a phone that has no data, and a suitcase full of maps and guidebooks back in the hotel reception.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get me wrong, clearly things turned out fine, and the day was nice enough, if a little (a lot) windy.\u00a0 I ended up all the way down to Harrod\u2019s in the shopping district before I decided to turn around and find somewhere with free wifi.\u00a0 Eventually, I found a caf\u00e9 with wifi, and got myself sorted out (I was like, 4 blocks from where I needed to be, but going in the wrong direction.\u00a0 Sheesh\u2026)<\/p>\n

Our room is fun!\u00a0 It\u2019s on the bottom story, so it\u2019s up the outside stairs, then down the inside stairs.\u00a0 It looks a little bit like Elise\u2019s apartment on the outside, except prettier (sorry, Elise).\u00a0 We have a kitchen that basically fits into a closet in the room.\u00a0 When I first walked in I was like, wait a second\u2026.\u00a0 And then I saw that one cabinet has dials on the outside.\u00a0 There is a door through the bathroom to a little walled space outside, but we haven\u2019t explored that yet.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Our front door! We are in there, down to the bottom, and right at the back<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Inside our room! This was the “kitchen”! I am leaning on the bed headboard in this picture. Kevin is standing by our little table, and there is a bathroom with an extremely contrary toilet down a little hall behind the door to the left. It was wee!<\/p><\/div>\n

We actually have internet in here, too!\u00a0 It\u2019s not the best internet ever, but it totally works, which is lovely.\u00a0 When Kevin got home, he was starving, so we headed out to find a bite to eat.\u00a0 Down the road a bit, we found a great little Irish pub.\u00a0 The music was fun, the food was great (they had this fancy ketchup stuff, SO GOOD).\u00a0 We went for a walk back up to Kensington Park after dinner, and then on the way home, we found a grocery store so we have provisions for the morning.\u00a0 Looking forward to a full day tomorrow!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The pub! Mmm…<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday,\u00a0 June 16th   Today we arrived in London!\u00a0 We left Barnsdale Hall early, because Kevin\u2019s fencing seminar at the Wallace Collection started at 10:30.\u00a0\u00a0 Getting to London and returning the car was uneventful, and we got a taxi into the city because it was almost cheaper than train tickets for two, and much easier […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":303,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}