Saturday we woke up again in London's Palmer's Lodge, just as we had six weeks earlier - only this time as a bit more seasoned travelers. The energy we possessed back then had faded some but we were determined to make the best of our final full day in Europe. This began with a trip to the Museum of Natural History in the morning. The museum was spectacular. It was of the old British architecture type that you could imagine Indiana Jones working for. The museum (which was free) had extraordinary exhibits ranging from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other natural disasters, to a giant collection of prehistoric dinosaur fossils and a life size t-rex robot - very cool!
After spending close to four hours in the museum, on our exit we ran into a street fair of artists, dancers, and musicians for a festival going on in the area. It looked like a lot of fun but we could not stay long because the afternoon was soon waning and clouds threatened showers overhead. We needed to make it to our other big attraction of the day, London's West End Live.
West End Live was an all day (actually all weekend) event in London's broadway-esque district. In Leicester Square, a large stage was setup and all the biggest musical shows and acts of the city performed a sampling of their shows for free, with the actual cast and music. Some of the featured shows included Wicked, Chicago, The Lion King, Sound of Music, High School Musical, and many others. Since we visited the museum in the morning, we were unable to see some of the top shows but in the afternoon we saw High School Musical, Stomp, and Mamma Mia. Also to our amusement we saw the performance of the London Gay Men's Choir. Yes, its exactly as you would expect. They even sung 'I Feel Pretty.' It was very amusing. Between shows we used a flyer we had received that advertised good food for a great cost at a restaurant on the square. We both ate two full meals there and enjoyed our neighboring table as a 30 or so year old British guy ate and drank with his friends for his birthday that largely resembled a bachelor's party.
After eating, we stopped by a tent setup by Ripley's Believe it or Not and watched a freaky contortionist pop his shoulder in and out of his body to escape from a strait jacket. We also went to a gift shop and since we had not bought any memorabilia the entire trip we bought a few little souvenirs to commemorate the trip.
It was now close to dusk but Nick still insisted to go back to downtown Westminster to get some good pictures of a few classic London sights we had missed our first go-round. This included getting good pictures of us with Big Ben, seeing Downing Street, and Scotland Yard (although we never found the last one). Just when we thought our day was complete, Laura decided she had to see Notting Hill (ala Julia Roberts). However, due to engineering works on the metro over the weekend, we were unable to make it there or to Wimbledon. Instead, we headed back to Palmer's Lodge after a fulfilling final day.
Sunday morning we woke early to catch the tube to Heathrow. Having learned our lessons from Laura's bag fiasco on the flight over, we secured all the straps on our bags with tape and knots so that there was absolutely NO way they could possibly be lost, delayed, or destroyed in the same fashion Laura's had previously. Before boarding the flight, we ate in a TGIFriday's for breakfast and used up our remaining pounds. The flight itself was great. We had been looking forward to the movies on the return flight for quite a while. Using Virgin Atlantic's latest personal media services, we eached watch 4 great movies before touching down in Chicago. As our passports were inspected by the US state official and we pased the gates to exit the terminal, Laura's parents were there to greet us and drive us back where we would have dinner at Outback in Fort Wayne with Nick's parents. We were finally back - we had made it!
We hope everyone enjoyed reading this blog. Maybe it recaptured some of your old memories of your own European vacations or inspired you to drop everything, get a backpack and do it yourself. Personally, we hope it's a good record of our trip and memories of a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Thank you all for reading.
Bye!
Monday, July 7, 2008
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