London

On the 27 we went to London for the day. I managed to stay up late the previous night, reading The Black Sun by James Twining (brilliant book!), so I was pretty knackered when we had to get up early and head on down for London. Had a great day though. We visited the British Museum again, and I have to say, it's one of the real must sees in England. The statues they have there are stunning, and I mean stunning. It's also incredible to think how they ended up in London, because most of them came ages ago and so probably came on wooden ships with sails. I know there's a bit of a thing about we shouldn't really have nabbed stuff from other countries, but I asked the guide about how these humongous statues ended up in the Museum, and she said that the British consul was asked by people at home who were concerned to see if the government would let them take the statues to Britain because the local people were mushing them up for mortar. So it's probably a good job they did take them. And it does mean that in going to the one museum (if you have the time), you can wander through its galleries and get a glimpse of life in just about every part of the world. Next on the list was lunch, which was okayish, but the chicken pie was too salty for my liking (and the portion was a bit small too :( ). Anyhow, after that we were going to the Tower Bridge museum, but when we got there we realised it would entail heights (which I'm really not good with) and didn't actually seem all that interesting, so we tootled along the side of the Thames on a bus, until I saw this pretty amazing cathedral (not St Paul's; it was a really really old one, as in founded pre-William the Conqueror) and we got off and had a look round and a drink. Then James insisted that we had to go on a Tube journey just for the sake of going on the Tube (the fact that we'd used it to get to the Museum apparently wasn't good enough for him). Mum and I got off a bit earlier to go back and have a look at some bookshops we'd spotted earlier--we'd already had a look in Hayles, which was quite amazing, so we then went in a couple of others too. And yes, I did buy some books--three to be precise. My own copy of the novel that kept me up the previous night, and two non-fiction. Then we had tea, at this fantastic Italian. We were looking for somewhere to go, and we'd seen a couple of places with pizzas sat around looking a bit limp, but then we walked past this place where the chef was stood pretty much in the window spinning pizzas around. So we went in there, and I had some fantastic pasta with mushrooms (and nibbled some of Mum's pizza too :D). Then we tootled home on the train. A long, long day, and pretty exhausting, but great fun too.