Thursday Dec. 11: A Matter of Moments

Up at 9:30, I headed out to do a little grocery shopping. I went to Jack O’Shea’s, fine butchers since 1790. I asked for bacon and the fellow behind the counter started grabbing some pork chops. I had to specify the strips of “streaky bacon” as it was labeled. One other crazy difference between them and us? They don’t refrigerate their eggs there. They just have the cardboard containers sitting stacked up on the counter. I fixed breakfast for the kids and we all lived, so maybe they're on to something over there.

After eating we headed out to catch a Big Bus Company hop-on/hop-off bus tour. It took us around town to all of the sites. It was a nice way to see all of the spots we might not have time to visit. A fellow named Ian was the live guide aboard the bus.
We sat up top where part of it was covered and the back half open. Ian was filled with fun facts and a few puns. He kept asking Virginia questions she was too shy to answer. At one point he asked Frank to sing London Bridge for the whole bus. He declined. He had the driver stop at an unscheduled spot so we could see the London Eye framing Big Ben. Despite Ian’s build up, it was slightly underwhelming.

Some people hopped off the bus and Virginia and I got the plum seat, right in the front row. It was a great vantage point from which to see a pedestrian come within one foot of being killed as he stepped right out in front of the bus. “Ah,” Ian said, “we’re just in time to kill this chap!” The guy spotted the big red bus bearing down on him at the last moment, just in time to leap back on the sidewalk. Guess it wasn’t his time to go.

In restrospect, I would have done the bus tour on the first full day we were in town. It is a great way to get your bearings on the first day whilest recovering from jet lag.

After two hours of Ian we arrived at the Tower of London and headed off the bus to go inside. We stopped at a restaurant called EAT. It took us forever to get our food ordered and get it eaten and get out of there. EAT was more like DAWDLE.

When we got to the ticket office, the woman told us that the last warder-led tour had already started out and the place was closing down. We had just missed our chance. So we got on the next bus and headed to Westminster Abbey, which we learned had just closed its doors to new visitors a matter of minutes earlier. Everything conspired against us and our touristy exploits!

We walked along the Thames at dusk, and got to see a nearly full moon emerge from the clouds right behind the London Eye. That was pretty cool.

We went to bed early, knowing we had just one more day to cram in everything else we wanted to do. We didn’t go to the Tea Clipper that night. We didn’t feel like we deserved it.