My Trip to the UK and Ireland, Day 2

Here we are on the Underground, going from the airport to somewhere in downtown London. Joel is pondering just how kewl this trip is going to be.

This particular Underground line quickly became Robb's favorite. [and who am I kidding, It was mine too.] We rode it often.

Yup! Double decker busses everywhere. Truth be told, it took a little bit to notice that everyone was driving and sitting on the wrong side... And from that point on I had no clue which way to look when crossing the street. Thankfully, they painted "Look Left" or "Look Right" on the road by the crosswalks.

This would be um... a monument of some sort. We were on our way to Hyde Park, I believe.

We are now walking through Hyde Park.. and we ran across this proper English woman walking her proper English dog. So I took a picture.

They had these all along the walkway in Hyde Park, and I saw them again later near Buckingham Palace.

Up ahead is the Serpentine Bridge. We're still walking through Hyde Park.

Okay.. Here we have "England is Weird" picture #1: The sign says "No Cycling" then there's a bike in a red circle.. but there's no cross through the bike. So were you to come upon the picture alone, you'd prolly think "Okay, this is a bike path." Perhaps the red indicates "No" in England or something? No clue. But based on this picture here, you'd have to believe that if they showed a picture of something inside a circle (A red circle, anyway) then said thing is a "No".

Here's the Albert Memorial Building something or other. I'm not really sure what it was.

This is the Albert Memorial. I don't know who Albert was, but apparently he was generous, and somebody liked him.

Here's the front of the memorial. From a distance, I thought it was a church.. It was quite big.

Kensington Palace. It was surrounded by some nice gardens.

Yes.. that's right: Chumbawamba. Apparently England didn't get the memo that they suck.

I took this cause it reminded me of Christa. ("Islington", not "The Rod Stewart Musical")

Here we are at the British Museum. There's Robb moving on ahead of me.

In the British Museum were a lot of artifacts and statues from Egypt.

And here are some hieroglyphics for you. "You know, I have a theory that hieroglyphics are just an ancient comic strip about a character named Sphinxy."

Here it is, a piece of The Great Sphinx's beard.

And here we have the Rosetta Stone. Very Impressive. I didn't even know it was here, but was pretty jazzed to see it.

Here's a closer view, where you can see the [fairly small writing] in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek.

Here's me with some Egyptian something or other statue. It is quite tall, and I'm quite attractive.

We've made our way through the Egyptian area, and now we have a Corinthian Helmet that I thought looked pretty kewl. I was excited to see this, as one of the things I very much wanted to see was a room with full suits of armor... We're headed in the right direction at this point.

There were a number of rooms dedicated to the remains of the Romans who lived in Britain. This large room had a decent chunk of an old temple, I believe.

They had a whole Trojan War thinger set up... cashing in on the Troy movie that was just released.

Discobolos (The Discus Thrower)

Put simply, this room ruled. It was filled with all sorts of old and unique clocks, and they were all set to almost the exact same time, so when they chimed, they all chimed together.

So here was my favorite clock. It had a tightly winding track underneath that a marble rolled on, and it made it to the end and hit a switch, and the plate the track was on tilted the other way, and the marble went back... It was set up so it'd hit the end on one side, and it'd take exactly 30 seconds to hit the other.. so it'd return to the start every minute. It was quite impressive.

And here we have a nice looking sword. I'm a big fan of swords... especially the old school knights and kings type swords.

Here we go... This sword is huge. I prolly should've found some sort of thinger to use as a point of reference, but I suck.. so.. That white piece box with the information is about 5 or 6 inches tall.. so that makes the sword at least "hella big".

We're all meeting up now for the Jack-the-Ripper walking tour, just across from the Tower of London. We've just finished eating at the Museum Pub, where we finally got some food and much beer into our systems, and are [some more than others] revitalized... I may have falled asleep at the pub...

This is one of the kewlest signs I've ever seen in my entire life. Now, based on the "No Cycling" sign, I'd guess this means "No Elderly People Allowed", which would be really funny.. But it's a triangle, and not a circle, so more likley it means "Caution, Elderly People", which is good advice no matter where you are... I'd imagine it's like deer crossing signs in the States... just just never know when an old person is going to come shuffling across the street and right into your car.

This is the famed Petticoat Lane, and one of the many stops on the Jack-the-Ripper walking tour.

And near the end of our tour, the famed Ten Bells... Also note the Old Style Cubs hat just in front. Go Cubs! After the tour, we hit the Underground to the train station, and trained out to Greenwich to get to our hostel.