Goodye for Now

It is now time for me to take my last bow in the city of London. After spending a week in London, I feel as if I already know the city. It's so different from any of the cities I've visited. First of all, the way that the city is made is so odd. There are huge skyscrapers adjacently dwarfing brick cottages. The juxtaposition of the archaic houses with the tall glass skyscraper shows the difference of architecture over the past few centuries. I'm not trying to sound pretentious, that's just how it felt. The cobblestone streets helped with the feeling that you're living in the Charles Dickins/Arthur Conan Doyle era England, which of course, I loved. One of the other things that was surprising and different for me was that everybody smoked. Literally EVERYBODY. In all public areas, in front of pubs, it doesn't matter. Everybody was smoking.
A few of the other cool things in London was that there were parks everywhere. Parks, squares, circuses (circusi?). There are always green areas for people to sit around. We played this game where we each picked a European food chain and counted how many we saw.
Dad: Pizza Express (15)
Mom: Cafe Nero (17)
Keira: Pret a Manger (27)
Obviously, Pret a Mangers were very popular.
Something that I found surprising was that it was very hard to find places for tea. We were able to find a nice French cafe where we had some tea and a slice of cake, but we couldn't find a place that served afternoon tea besides the fancy, expensive hotels. And this leads us to a problem, the final problem of our trip to London. Even in six days in London, we were not able to check off everything on our, or, more specifically, my list of things to do. Some of the things that I wanted to do were visit Russell Square Gardens, ride backwards in a cab, have tea, and visit Leinster Terrace, the empty house from the last episode of Sherlock. That just means that I'll have to come back some time in the future. :)
Now we are in Portugal, so prepare for some new topics in our summer blogging adventure. Stay tuned!
K

We found Keira's favorite treat. Custard from M&S! It was not only delicious, but the best priced treat in London!

Hyde Park

Adorable signets enjoying an algae treat from Mum

Princess Diana Memorial Fountain

In line for our flight to Faro