Traveling Light Relay

… is to sleep in and get wakeup by the maid, feels just like vacation. I don’t know how others felt, but I thought that is exactly what we needed at that point, taking it easy a little bit. We simply didn’t get any quality sleep since the day we left Toronto. By the time we were ready to go out, it was almost noon. So we lost 6 hours to the flight coming in, another 3 or 4 hours sleeping in, our planned itinerary was basically ruined. Ok, it wasn’t that bad, we just had to make some adjustment; for gals, they chose not to visit the Westminster area; for us guys, we just didn’t go as much shopping (missed the Harrod’s… oh well) But for this day 3, we pretty much stayed together throughout.

The Rock and Sole Plaice
I suppose Fish and Chips is one of the few British dishes out there. So this Rock and Sole Plaice is supposedly the oldest Fish and Chips restaurant in London.

We thought it’s cafeteria self-serve style there, since there were so many people lining up for takeouts, but someone behind the counter told us we’ll be served shortly. Looking at the menu, there were like 6 different kinds of fish you can choose from. Me being a travel guide nerd, I ordered what the book recommended, the fish Skate. Because Cod is most popular there, they don’t have Skate ready-fried like they have for Cod, and I had to wait a bit longer (“they must be still cleaning the scale…”)

Another “bad” thing about Skate is that there is lots of fin (or are they just soft bones?) Anyway, since I’m not eating those fin, I had to separate them out. And becuase of that, I took out all the batter at the same time, made my meal so much healthier. I guess I would’ve eaten all those batter if I had another fish.

In fact, I begin to wonder if that is the proper way of eating fish & chip; not eating any batter. I found my fish pretty tasty and moist, not oily at all. With all those fin and batter left in my plate, it looked as big as before.

Covent Garden
We decided shopping is the best thing to do after having such a big lunch. The area where the Fish & Chips place located is called Covent Garden; there used to be fruit and vegetable markets. But now it’s mostly a place for tourists to shop. You can tell it’s a tourist trap when they have street performances on a weekday. I mean, I can understand having performances in a summer weekend (like in Ottawa), but a weekday in winter? I don’t think you can find that anywhere in Canada.

According to our original itinerary, we actually left Day 3 quite open. But then by the time we left Covent Garden, it was already 3pm. We ended up going to the South Bank, which is on the other side of the River Thames. We were supposed to spend some time in that area on Day 1, but we managed to go up on the London Eye only. This time, we only went to a museum called Tate Modern.

Tate Modern

I’m not sure why is it called modern. To me, modern should be all about mechanical, logical, practical stuff. This seems to me more like post-modern. As for Tate, it is name of the organization’s founder. The main purpose of this visit was for Tyatt to get some weird postcards for her friend. But I think we actually enjoyed the limited time we were there for. Things there, after all, are quite unique. After Tate Modern, we went to Tower Bridge (with some detour and roadblock)

Tower Bridge

Next to the Bridge is Tower of London, one of the most popular tourist attraction. Two things prevented us from going in: 1) Expensive admission, 2) It’s closed for the day already.

British Museum

(7 Tyatt’s photo, lots of overlap, stitched up)

Best thing about British Museum, other than the fact that it’s free, is that it opens late on Friday and Saturday. We planned it all along to visit Friday evening, and it seems we weren’t the only one; there was this one cute girl we saw on our flight to London there at the British Museum as well. Thomas lamented that he didn’t go up and talk to her when we were stuck in Halifax (he actually did tell me on the flight that he wanted to do just that)

One of the must-see: Egyptian Collection

Of course, one of the impression I got when I saw their collections: what a big collection of loot! Oh well, I guess all of this are in good hands, better than anywhere else in the world.

Another must-see: Parthenon

Stitching like Crazy

As you can tell by now, I am almost obsessed in stitching up multiple photos. In fact, I went back to British Museum on Day 6 just to get more pictures of the place. Some of the stitched up pictures turned out better than others.

(3 pictures stitched up)

British Museum is such a nice place; I think I like the building itself more than the lootings they have in there.

(5 pictures stitched up)

Inside the round building, the library:

(6 pictures stitched up)