England - The Granny - day 3
The waitress approached our table at breakfast with a tray of drinks, she handed out fresh orange juice and coffee with a smile. She reached for the last cup of coffee, gave it to Chelsea to give to me with a “and this is for the granny.”
Wait…what?
I looked at Chelsea.
“Did she just call me The Granny.” We erupted into belly laughs.
And did we ever do justice to this breakfast. We had a big day ahead and needed fuel.
We had an hour or so to kill before our tickets for the British Museum. The kids rented electric bikes again for a ride in Hyde Park, and I went for a gentle walk, sat on a park bench and meditated for a while. Electric bikes are not for grannies. Lylah was soon telling Chelsea and I that the granny joke was getting old…we just laughed louder..we both know that word will be capable of fueling a good laugh for years to come.
The British Museum was everything we had heard and more.
The Egyptian exhibit was spectacular. We saved the mummies for last, and they didn’t disappoint. You could see the wheels turning in Jai and Lylahs heads. Nothing like dead people wrapped in bandages for thousands of years to stoke their imaginations,
It occurred to me that these were the first (maybe) books. A good story has been the mainstay of civilization forever.
By now, we had walked off some of the breakfast and were all more than a little tired and food seemed like a good idea. So we headed for Borough Market, another noisy, confusing, out of body experience for these Hawai’i locals.
From meat pies to cannolis, paella to loaded fries. Somebody had the idea years ago to make a huge open area, shielded by a large overpass (an area I suspect was once home to homeless people) Into a large food market. We realize the biggest dilemma once we had all purchased something to eat and found there was nowhere to sit and eat it. People were sitting on a step or standing and eating their purchases. All in all a fun experience.
A full days worth of experiences already and it was only 1:30. What to do with the rest of the day? I pulled out a list of possible attractions in London that I had made prior to the trip and we realized the only one we had not done so far was London Tower.
And so, with Chelsea determined to make the very most of this trip, that she has been working and saving hard for for months, we roused our tired feet for one more extravaganza.
Google maps said walking distance… it makes .8 of a mile sound like a literal walk in the park. But today was another gorgeous day, with clear blue skies, 80 some degrees, and we were all pretty worn out already so the walk just about did us in.
Apparently Chelsea was the only one that saw the sign in the tower warning us that there were 130 steps ahead. When she told me later, I told her if I had seen that, I would’ve taken a seat outside under a tree and waited for them.
And so we saw torture Chambers, and all the accoutrements of war in days gone by. We read tales of bodies of little princes found dead after presenting a threat to lineage to the throne. And various other poor souls who met a gruesome end for often trumped up reasons.
Exiting the tower, we did have a jaw-dropping view of Tower Bridge. But I had had enough, “I’m calling an Uber.” I announced. And got no resistance. While we have become quickly adept using the tube, none of us could face that .8 of a mile walk again.
“The Granny needs a nap,” chuckled Chelsea.
And I wasn’t the only one. After a long, arduous, sometimes hair-raising drive home in the Uber in rush-hour traffic, we all collapsed without a word. Chelsea tried unsuccessfully to rouse these two after a few hours, afraid that they won’t sleep tonight. I’d put money on it that they will.
