On the (Proverbial) Road Again

Back by popular demand! Or, at least, back for a moment while we are traveling overseas again. It seems momentous, anyway, that we have graduated to a new stage of our family: we now have a high schooler in our midst, as well no one in the elementary grades anymore. (Maggie started kindergarten at our neighborhood school in 2014. So it’s officially been a decade of going to that building nearly every day. Quite a chapter in our lives!)

Maybe we overreacted, because we are definitely not at Needham Elementary anymore! We are starting our summer adventures in London. Pip pip!

We left Durango after school and flew to Denver, then overnight to Heathrow. Arriving at lunchtime (apparently — our bodies were so confused!), we simply navigated to the apartment we’d rented, moved in, and fell into deep slumber.

Somehow we managed to sleep until noon. Excuse me?! Yes, noon. But yet, somehow we managed to sightsee at, through, and in the Tower Bridge.

Plus stroll along the Thames, including through Borough Market. Aaaand spend an hour or more at the Tate Modern.

After making it past the dreaded sleepless second night, we Tubed into town to the Grant Museum of Zoology. Here is a collection of fascinating things, like a formaldehyded tub of assorted snakes, a full skeleton of the extinct quagga, and a collection of bisected heads. In the late 19th century, biologists studied all these specimens with great interest. Now we could buy a refrigerator magnet depicting their famous jar of moles.

And to make sure we stayed awake, we had something special planned: a silent disco tour! We met our guide in Trafalgar Square where he handed out a pair of headphones to each of us (and our 20ish dancing partners). He then proceeded to lead us through the streets, giving us some choreographed moves, telling us when to belt it out loud, and somehow making it all seem perfectly fun and not embarrassing at all. We got a lot of smiles, some waves, and more than a few phone cameras pointed our direction. It was definitely an energizing hour, and it warmed us up too! (We might have packed mostly for 5 weeks in sunny Italy, not 4 days in rainy London.)

(I kind of wish I’d gotten my own video of us strutting through China Town, stepping in time to the Backstreet Boys. But not really, because I would have had to take a break from all the silly dancing. And there was no way I could do that!)

We rounded out the evening just wandering over to Big Ben and Parliament. Because, why not?

Whew! Day 3 was very relaxing. We just walked around, hopping from spot to spot on the map. Wherever looked interesting. We popped up to a rooftop garden, went across London Bridge back to Borough Market for lunch, through neighborhoods to Kensington Gardens, took a break at Buckingham Palace, then all along Hyde Park, before riding an incredibly packed Tube train home.

Now off we go to Italy! First stop, Assisi!