Shoes, Feet and their overuse.

Woke up this AM and began the day with a session of "wash-the-clothes-in-the-sink / rinse-the-clothes-in-the-shower". This is the life! Woke the boys up within that first hour without trying (you try letting your 'flat-mate' sleep while doing laundry in a 4-bunk room no larger than 8' x 8'!). Erected a drying line stretched across the entire room, opened the window, trained the fan on it and hoped for dry clothes when we returned from our day's aventure.

Off to breakfast we go. To Kiko's Cafe ~ A quaint little place on the corner about 1/2 a block from our hostel. The waitress, a french woman, helped us out by giving us introduction to using the bus system instead of the tube. This gave us access to and viewing of asection of town that we never would have seen otherwise! Nice! She didn't know anything as she exclusively used the tube, but her co-worker did. Nice. Great food (Kyle: Omelette; jake: Baguette Sandwich w/egg/ ham/ cheese/ etc; Kriss: English Muffin w/ Ham & cheese & Egg; John: sort of a 'grand slam' w/ Back Bacon, Sausage, egg, toast, mushrooms & tomatoes. Nice food to start the day. And a FABULOUSLY BEAUTIFUL DAY IT WAS!

Weather break: Approx 75-80 all day. Some sparse clouds and a lot of sun. Fantastic.

Yesterday was super-humid and about 85. Not so pleasant. Glad to have today be a LOT better.
We even attempted to buy sunscreen but were unsuccessful when we found only 6-oz bottles instead of the TSA-required 4-oz bottles! Oh well...SOON!

First stop: The British Museum...
On the way, however, we walked by a shoe store, and since we were already aware that the boys could use some new shoes, we stopped in to see what they had. About 45 min's later they each had themselves some cool new DC skate shoes. On to the museum!

Kyle had it in his head that he wanted to see the Elgin Marbles as he did a report on them in school. We found them (marble relief statues from the Greek Parthenon in Athens that the British have absconded with and put in their museum), and we had completed the important part of our trip to the museum. We then wandered about seeing stuff like Egyptian mummies (including animals) and other cool stuff. Nice museum. We raced through and got out of there. By the way: Museums (mostlye) are FREE in London. Cool. Means you don't have to spend tons of time there to try to get 'your money's worth'.

After the British Museum, we went to go to the Tower of London. We thought the trip there was going to be easy...hope on the red line and transfer to the circle line. NOT... it was like a mile walk between the two! we spend a LOT of time going around underground in tunnels searching for the right train to get to where we wanted to be. We had visited already with the Ceremony of the Keys the night before and the castle looked really cool so we wanted to be sure to go back. We got there at about 2pm and decided we'd tour around and see it and THEN go to get food later. We spend 3 solid hours there, including a 1-hour tour and then a we wandered the rest on our own...on the way out we asked a "Beef Eater" for a family photo...it came with a price...as he grabed both my left breast as well as John's...those Beef Eaters are sly!

After the tower, the object was FOOD and REST. We decided to walk in the general direction of our hostel and see if we could find food on the way. We walked. We walked. We walked. We gave up. So we decided to get on the Tube to find our hostel and then get food after that. Our walking included seeing thousands of business-dressed people walking away from their apparrent work places to get home. We passed many a pub on the way through that area. They were all packed. We're talking HUNDREDS of people standing out in the streets in front of pubs with beers in their hands, talking and winding down their work dayws. Amazing.

We also came accidentally across the Leadenhall Market. A cobblestoned street area of markets and pubs and the like. Fabulous midieval looking area of obviously-historical import. Fabulous. Boys were bored of it, however, due to lack of food and monstrous overuse of feet walking. Eventually, we got on the tube and found that, after walking from one station to the next for ANOTHER mile of walking, we got on the train that took us past the station where we just were, in order to make it back to the Hostel. A little time of 'regrouping' at the hostel and I ( John) went walking about 1-2 blocks down the street to check out the local restaurants to see if there was something that we could all agree on in the haste and pissiness of serious food-deprivation and tired feet. Luck! I found a group of about six reasonable restaurants about 1-1/2 blocks from our hostel. I returned to tell K&K&J about the find. We walked the 1-1/2 blocks and ate at a seafood place called "back to basics". good stuff.

ah...sedated...too much wine at dinner...well that is not without a few whiffs of cigarette smoke every few minutes...you know how i love the smokers....ok if you don't know that is my only really defining separation of the Darwinian Theory...now we can walk back to the hostel without any "hostile" words...we all went to the room...where the boys stayed! John and I went down to the common room where we downloaded photos and wrote to you all.

The common rooom: Right this second I can see four kids (10? 11? 9?) writing in their travel journals. I don't know where they are from but they sound Italian?. Six people are using Hostel computers to surf the net. We and a few others are using their own laptops to do the same. four are playing on the big-screen Wii syste. 8 are waiting at the desk to either check in or out or ask some pertinenet questions. The ages of these "Youth Hostel Association" members.

we are loving this trip! more to come in the AM...

Check out pictures at the FLICKR site:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/16592717@n00/
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