We slept in this morning after overstepping our step count yesterday at Camden Market. The eggs were still the cystic fried egg or the orange scrambled variety so I passed on those and opted for the baked beans, mushrooms, grilled tomato and coco puffs cereal. While I will admit it was an eclectic combination of items, they collectively hit the spot. Also, the coffee at the UJC must be an aquired taste and, since I won’t be here long enough to acquire that taste, I opted for tea. They have PG Tipps, one of my favorites.
After my odd mix of breakfast items and my pretty good cuppa, we headed off to the London Science Museum. E-Koog was excited because we were led to believe there was an F1 exhibit. There was not. He had a good time anyway, I think. We were sharing the museum with all the children of London. Seriously, there were like 5000 kids in that place. All with reflective safety vests. It’s not like you could miss them because they were at least 100 decibels each. Oh, and not one of them walked. It was either a full sprint or skipping.
The medical section had all sorts of gems. My FaceBook friends appreciated my posting about the Tobacco Smoke Enema to help revive people that drowned. I tried to see if we could get one for our pool from Amazon, but either they do not sell them or they were out of stock. Made a note to keep looking. I also enjoyed the “bedpan as wall art” display. It was quite colorful and they all appeared to be clean. The infestation of elementary schoolers made the contraceptive and gynecology exhibit much more interesting, I will admit. On display was a cornucopia of contraception and of those didn’t work there was large variety of forceps. Of course, the teens ran from all of this except the enema. They were just confused by that idea.
The boys and I enjoyed the gaming exhibit. It was worth the extra ticket price to see hundreds of games from Pong to Virtual Reality and descriptions of how each one evolved into the next. I spent a lot of time at the Commadore64 playing Frogger. When I was a kid, my cousin had a C64 and a giant book of games that could be coded. I spent a week or so with them one summer and my singular focus was coding a Frogger-like game. That was probably the start of my interest in computers.
Anyway, we ate a surprisingly good and unsurprisingly expensive lunch in their cafeteria. We explored more of the airplane and locomotive section and then headed out to another site of E’s choosing, Harrod’s. This kid has champagne taste on a prosecco budget. Since Mrs. Koog was with us this time, we only bought 2 bottles of Voss water. She kept a very keen eye on each of us and we were not really allowed to be free range in the giant department store. E was happy to have walked through the food hall and the chocolate and baking halls.
Since we were not allowed to buy things at Harrod’s, like the £475 waygu tomohawk steak, we decided a more affordable snack at Caffe Concerto across the street was more appropriate. B-Koog and I ordered the Cream Tea for 2, E had 3 macarons and the Mrs. had a peach iced tea. All 4 of us ended up eating the pasteries from the Cream Tea and we still took some back to our room. Oh, B and I both had Earl Gray if you were wondering.
Now, we were tired as we had walked 14K steps and we were still in Caffe Concerto. Luckily, we were right across the street from Harrod’s and the Knightsbridge tube stop. We did the very tired people equivalent of a hop, skip and a jump and got on the train for Waterloo station. After arriving at Waterloo, it got interesting. For those that saw the Seinfeld finale where they were wandering around the parking garage looking for their car, it was like that except we were roaming through a tube station trying to find the exit that got us out near our hotel. After a series of lifts, escalators, going both up AND down sets of stairs and extremely long hallways, we came out of a door right across from the Union Jack club. I don’t know how we got there and I would never be able to find that route again.
All four of us hit the bed for our now customary late afternoon nap. Since it doesn’t get dark until around 10, we like to be out a little later than usual. We woke up at 6:15, headed to the tube for Covent Garden. After a nice stroll and a stop to see some street performer that E has seen on Instagram, we found a nice French place for dinner. We were in luck, Tuesday’s are steak frites nights so it was only £19 for each boy to eat their daily slab of cow flesh! Mrs. Koog had mussels and I had my fave, chicken palliard. I think that may be our favorite dinner so far in Londontown.
We did a brief stroll around Covent Garden and I took a few snaps. Wimbledon was on the big screen with several chairs in a nice courtyard with a bar serving cocktails and strawberries and cream. Going to Wimbledon is a bucket list item for me but it won’t be on this trip. I was happy to make do with watching Serena Williams on the big screen. I love her.
So, back on the tube and back to Waterloo Station but this time we didn’t go the Seinfeld route, we came out the way we went in and it all worked out. The boys immediately went to bed and snores were heard from their room. Since I sweat like a farm animal, I hit the shower after checking my email and writing my blog about Camden. Apparently, B-Koog had some kind of wacky half asleep/half awake thing going because he banged on the bathroom door, spoke some kind of growl in gibberish and when I opened the door to let him in, he slammed it behind me. I heard business being done and less than 30 seconds later he walked out of the bathroom, still doing his gibberish growl and went back to bed. The Mrs. and I just shrugged our shoulders and chalked it up to another night of having exhausted teens in our room. (As I write this, it’s the next day and I asked him about what was up with the growl and the door slam, he has no recollection of the event.)
Tomorrow is our last day in London. I can’t believe it.
After my odd mix of breakfast items and my pretty good cuppa, we headed off to the London Science Museum. E-Koog was excited because we were led to believe there was an F1 exhibit. There was not. He had a good time anyway, I think. We were sharing the museum with all the children of London. Seriously, there were like 5000 kids in that place. All with reflective safety vests. It’s not like you could miss them because they were at least 100 decibels each. Oh, and not one of them walked. It was either a full sprint or skipping.
The medical section had all sorts of gems. My FaceBook friends appreciated my posting about the Tobacco Smoke Enema to help revive people that drowned. I tried to see if we could get one for our pool from Amazon, but either they do not sell them or they were out of stock. Made a note to keep looking. I also enjoyed the “bedpan as wall art” display. It was quite colorful and they all appeared to be clean. The infestation of elementary schoolers made the contraceptive and gynecology exhibit much more interesting, I will admit. On display was a cornucopia of contraception and of those didn’t work there was large variety of forceps. Of course, the teens ran from all of this except the enema. They were just confused by that idea.
The boys and I enjoyed the gaming exhibit. It was worth the extra ticket price to see hundreds of games from Pong to Virtual Reality and descriptions of how each one evolved into the next. I spent a lot of time at the Commadore64 playing Frogger. When I was a kid, my cousin had a C64 and a giant book of games that could be coded. I spent a week or so with them one summer and my singular focus was coding a Frogger-like game. That was probably the start of my interest in computers.
Anyway, we ate a surprisingly good and unsurprisingly expensive lunch in their cafeteria. We explored more of the airplane and locomotive section and then headed out to another site of E’s choosing, Harrod’s. This kid has champagne taste on a prosecco budget. Since Mrs. Koog was with us this time, we only bought 2 bottles of Voss water. She kept a very keen eye on each of us and we were not really allowed to be free range in the giant department store. E was happy to have walked through the food hall and the chocolate and baking halls.
Since we were not allowed to buy things at Harrod’s, like the £475 waygu tomohawk steak, we decided a more affordable snack at Caffe Concerto across the street was more appropriate. B-Koog and I ordered the Cream Tea for 2, E had 3 macarons and the Mrs. had a peach iced tea. All 4 of us ended up eating the pasteries from the Cream Tea and we still took some back to our room. Oh, B and I both had Earl Gray if you were wondering.
Now, we were tired as we had walked 14K steps and we were still in Caffe Concerto. Luckily, we were right across the street from Harrod’s and the Knightsbridge tube stop. We did the very tired people equivalent of a hop, skip and a jump and got on the train for Waterloo station. After arriving at Waterloo, it got interesting. For those that saw the Seinfeld finale where they were wandering around the parking garage looking for their car, it was like that except we were roaming through a tube station trying to find the exit that got us out near our hotel. After a series of lifts, escalators, going both up AND down sets of stairs and extremely long hallways, we came out of a door right across from the Union Jack club. I don’t know how we got there and I would never be able to find that route again.
All four of us hit the bed for our now customary late afternoon nap. Since it doesn’t get dark until around 10, we like to be out a little later than usual. We woke up at 6:15, headed to the tube for Covent Garden. After a nice stroll and a stop to see some street performer that E has seen on Instagram, we found a nice French place for dinner. We were in luck, Tuesday’s are steak frites nights so it was only £19 for each boy to eat their daily slab of cow flesh! Mrs. Koog had mussels and I had my fave, chicken palliard. I think that may be our favorite dinner so far in Londontown.
We did a brief stroll around Covent Garden and I took a few snaps. Wimbledon was on the big screen with several chairs in a nice courtyard with a bar serving cocktails and strawberries and cream. Going to Wimbledon is a bucket list item for me but it won’t be on this trip. I was happy to make do with watching Serena Williams on the big screen. I love her.
So, back on the tube and back to Waterloo Station but this time we didn’t go the Seinfeld route, we came out the way we went in and it all worked out. The boys immediately went to bed and snores were heard from their room. Since I sweat like a farm animal, I hit the shower after checking my email and writing my blog about Camden. Apparently, B-Koog had some kind of wacky half asleep/half awake thing going because he banged on the bathroom door, spoke some kind of growl in gibberish and when I opened the door to let him in, he slammed it behind me. I heard business being done and less than 30 seconds later he walked out of the bathroom, still doing his gibberish growl and went back to bed. The Mrs. and I just shrugged our shoulders and chalked it up to another night of having exhausted teens in our room. (As I write this, it’s the next day and I asked him about what was up with the growl and the door slam, he has no recollection of the event.)
Tomorrow is our last day in London. I can’t believe it.
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