Day 7: London's grand finale!

Paddington Station. Paddington Station is where we got off the train each day and connected with the tube (subway). Here is a picture of the statue of Paddington Bear, the children's book character named after Paddington Station. Nearby there is also a little shop full of Paddington Bear paraphernalia. We didn't get any, but I really wanted to for future children. It would have been kind of awkward to have such paraphernalia in our home with no children though. So I thought the next time we go to London we'll get some! The sign says, "Mr. and Mrs. Brown first met Paddington on a railway platform. In fact, that was how he came to have such an unusual name for a bear, for Paddington was the name of the station.
Below is the eye of London. We didn't ride the ferris wheel type ride since we had literally been ALL over London. If we were swimming in cash I'm sure we would have obliged to take a ride, but that is yet another thing we will do when we "come back" for our next trip. The other photos are that of Big Ben - the clock tower. This clock tower (named big ben because the main bell inside the tower was nicknamed big ben) sits at the end of the houses of Parliament.
It rained from before we left the house that morning to until we got home that night! We literally had our "foggy rainy day in London" the ENTIRE day. We tried to get all the "outdoor site-seeing" done early in the morning so that we could dry off the rest of the day, but that wasn't really to our advantage either. Here Lyle is still chipper even though it's raining. I had an umbrella and NOT a waterproof little jacket and shoes. Lyle had his waterproof jacket, NOT waterproof jeans or shoes. Oh, and there's CHIPPER CHURCHILL.
We saw all these protestors sitting across the street from Parliament. They were camped out (literally) in the rain. Their stuff was pretty graphic. I'm guessing they're not happy about the war? Hmmm.
Here is Westminster Abbey. What a beauty! We didn't go in or take a tour. The picture on the bottom right was a street all set up for a 10K race going on that day (our Memorial Day). London takes this day as a holiday too (funny). They were beginning their race in an hour or so and people started gathering in the rain all ready to go. It was pretty cool to think that you could run a race through these historic places. The finish line I think was at Buckingham Palace? Oh, the BEST and most funny thing that happened that morning was as we were walking along the race route we heard "pump up" music from loudspeakers. As I listened, it was the theme from Friends, "I'll be there for you...". The people of London LOVE LOVE LOVE friends. The fact that THAT song was playing as we were seeing Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace was HILARIOUS because it reminded me of Joey from Friends during their trip to England, "LONDON BABY!" Ha!

Below is Buckingham Palace. Again, we didn't tour anything. This is where the Queen resides during her "business" trips to the city. I just got a few pics because this was at the point where Lyle and I started getting ornery with one another about the rain. Lyle in particular was NOT a happy camper. Neither was I. We were wet, SOAKED is more like it, and we had the ENTIRE day left in London. Yuck. Needless to say we went back to Oxford Circus to return something I had bought and exchanged it for SOCKS...DRY socks. By about 5pm, we were totally dry. THANK HEAVEN!
Here is an exhibit at the Children's Science Museum. I wonder why Lyle wanted this pic. It was a mock up of an "actual" dentist's office in the 1890's. Pretty Cool to see all these different setup rooms. I liked the anatomy room set up below from the 1300s. CRAZY to think that these type of sciences were studied THEN.Here is a red telephone booth. Really, I was not inspired to set foot in one, but I did feel like I needed to take a picture of one for pop culture sake. Oh, ha...the oil recovery was part of an exhibit at the Natural History Museum (where we only had time to spend about 45 minutes there before it closed). It was actually cool to learn about a few things about the earth. Do you think I should send this photo to Bush or whomever's controlling our oil resources (or lack of) so that we can figure out how to get our own? It says it all right there...fyi.

This ugly thing made me squirm. This is an Acanthostega. It was one of the first four-legged animals and had eight fingers, seven toes, and a tail fin. An early tetrapod, it was found in East Greenland and is 367-362 million years old.GRRRRR!

In between the museums and our WICKED showing, we grabbed a QUICK bite to eat at a YUMMY Indian Restaurant. They have GOOD GOOD Indian food in London. We LOVE Indian Food. MMM. Oh, by the way, we had to get SUBWAY (yes, American Food) for lunch because NOTHING English was open for Lunch. Everyone had the day off because of the holiday. HELLO! It is an American Holiday! How come the Brits take off the American Holiday while the Americans don't even get it off in ANOTHER country! So 6inch turkey and cheese it was!

After our yummy Indian Food we hopped on a tube to go see Wicked. Whilst getting on the tube we were literally running to catch it in time. I jumped on JUST as the doors were closing in on me! Whew! I had a true "catch the subway" experience with that one. We were SO SO SO excited to go see Wicked. I had read 3/4 of the book, but didn't like how racey it was so I stopped reading it. Well this allowed the last half of the production to be a complete shock to me. I LOVED IT! By the way, we were squinting pretty good to see through the rain...hence the looks on our face in the pic. We really WERE excited. PROMISE! It was awesome! I recommend it to ANYONE!
There is Lyle playing with my ipod since his phone battery had died (hence he could not place chess on his phone). He is a boy and likes games.