We had lunch today at this great little vegetarian place called 222 here in Fulham / West Kensington. It was a buffet style and all of the food was really tasty and fresh.

What a wonderful day. We set out for the day and the tube was working. We went to Victoria Station and bought an all day ticket to “The Original Bus Tour” it is a double decker bus you can get on and off all day. It stops at all the main places in London. We also got an included walking tour of Jack the Ripper. I can tell you that was creepy. We stood on some of the exact spots the dead bodies where found. We walked through the East End of London where in 1888 the poor lived and had been forgotten. Many of the buildings and cobbled streets are the same. Now it is a clean trendy area but you can just see the dim street lamps and the old time people walking. Whew I loved it. We jumped on the bus again and got off to see another musical. Avenue Q is what we ended up seeing. It was a comedy with puppets and it was a musical. Strange but good. Before the show we had time to get dinner and relax. It was a nice day.

After our traveling fiascos from the previous day we decided to sleep in and then just bum around Fulham to see what it had to offer.

We stumbled upon Chelsea Football Club (stadium). It looks huge. And to imagine that there are several if these stadiums around London.

Continuing to explore Fulham we found a really cool old cemetary called Brompton. I took a crap load of pictures. There were some really amazing headstones and monuments built there. The oldest headstone I came across was from 1840. There also had to be a few thousand squirrels there too. They seemed to be very acclimated to humans as the would literally come right up to you.

Then we saw they movie The Hangover. This movie was hilarious. The whole time I was wondering what they were going to do next. What for the credits though, they finish the movie off well.

For dinner we went to an amazing Thai restaurant called Blue Elephant. It is a world-wide chain with locations in Dubai, Bangcock and a bunch of others I can’t remember. For a London restaurant, this place was massive!

This day was Thursday or our trip. It has been a week since we left the States.

This is the second day of the strike so we decided to stay in our area and see what happens. We wanted to go to Victoria Station and do the bus tour for the day. I didn’t work out that way because we got a late start on the day and I didn’t want to spend hour after hour waiting for the tube and bus. We went to eat in a local place near our hotel. Then we headed down towards Fulham/Broadway. This is three or four blocks away. We ended up next to a really cool cemetery. Travel was still difficult so we went to a movie and the Blue Elephant for dinner in the same area. We went back to the hotel to get some rest for the next day that the tube would be running again. Finally!

We checked out the Dali exhibit (across the bridge from Big Ben). I have always liked his art and creativity. After the exhibit I now know that he was pushing his creativity outside the most conventional creative realms. He showed me that to create absolutely uniquely creative works of art, you need to fully embrace your crazy nature. I have much more respect for him now. We managed to sneak a couple pics too.

Afterwards we went up to Licester Square to get show tickets to Chicago. We picked up our tickets at one of those half price places. We paid £24.50 when they were normally about £45.

The theatre were Chicago was playing is in a round-about intersection with 7 roads coming into it. We had never seen such a thing. Chicago was fun to see. Then it took us about 2.5 or three hours to get home, as the tubes were still down and the buses were to full to accept more people. We were passed up by buses several times.

So yesterday was a day we didn’t know what we wanted to do. The tube strike was in full force so jumping on and off areas was not possible. We went to High Street Kensington to get some things to keep Chaunce from getting sick. We ate and shopped at Whole Foods. After we went to Westminster to see the Dali exhibit. It was a collection of his sculptures. I love some of his work and I could care less about others. It was a very cool place. We decided to walk around and see if we could get tickets to a musical. We didn’t have much cash on hand so we got cheap tickets to see Chicago. We had some time to kill before the show so we ended up at Covent Gardens. We ate some subway on this sun dial structure in a round about. The play was very entertaining. The kicker was it took about 2 hours and 45 min. To get back to the hotel the tube was down and the busses got packed full. It was a very difficult experiance. Chaunce was a trooper, I was a bit of a poopie head. We finally made it home about 1:00 am or so. Whew, we have to deal with the tube down today too.

The Underground Tube Strike was in full effect today, well, mostly. We had understood that all lines would be down and that there might be a scattered few that would be up. Fortunately we were heading to an area that had a bus line to it, so we caught a double decker public bus. Note: you don’t exit the front but in the rear of the bus. I tried to exit the front but the driver prett much ignored me.

Had lunch at Whole Foods as we also picked up a couple other things from there. I also tried ginger beer, thinking it would be like root beer. Damn was I wrong. In tiny print at the bottom Heidi noticed that it has .5% alcohol, probably from the firmentation process. It tasted wretched! Avoid that stuff like the plague.

Then we happened to catch one of the rumored few tubes running out to Westminster. Getting off I had a chance to snap a pic of the turnstyles (Joe will appreciate).

This trip took the place of Paris. Bummer but oh well. We got to see where the Queen lives on the weekends. The history of Windsor Castle was amazing. I love King Henry VIII history and he lived in that very castle. Wow! I loved it. Then we moved on to Stonehenge. It was also amazing. At least I can say I have been. PS I am married LOL! It doesn’t feel different yet.

Ok, I thought I would love Bath. All the English movies I love the people go to Bath. It was fun to see it but the bugs loved me and it sucked to have them all over me. We saw some 2,000 year old Roman Baths and I was ready to leave. We got some amazing pictures.

Ok, we now have to figure out how to get arround the city today. They have a Tube Strike today and maybe tomorrow as well.

Yesterday was nice, as we had someone drive us around to a few touristy places on a tour that we decided to do, seeing as how we were unable to get arrangements to Paris made. We went to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge and a town called Bath.

Starting at Windsor Castle, we roamed around and I snapped a few sneaky shots on our camera (most places don’t allow photography).

Then we went to Stonehenge. This was my favorite part of the trip. It was smaller than I had imagined. Don’t get me wrong, it is still large and awesome in many ways, I had just thought it would have been larger. I did take many pictures of it though (full 360 degree view of it).

At one point there I noticed a bird flying in the wind. It was flapping in the wind yet not going anywhere. It looked like it was just hovering in the air. An it continued to do it for several minutes straight. It was one of the most bizarre things I had seen at one or the most mysterious places on earth. It gave me goose bumps at one point.

Then we were off to Bath. It is famous for it’s Roman mineral baths that seep up from the earth.

We had some food afterwards at the chain place I can’t remember the name of. We found out a very important piece of information though, lemonade here is not the lemonade we have in the States. Lemonade in London is Sprite. I found out by trying to order an Arnold Palmer (half tea and lemonade) and Heidi ordered a lemonade. The lady asked her if she wanted draft or bottle and Heidi said bottle. They brought her a Sprite and me a half tea and Sprite. We told the lady an she said that lemonade and Sprite were the same thing. Then she explained what lemonade was here and we told her what lemonade was back in the States. We had a chuckle about it afterwards.

Once back into London, our tour guide told us that the London Underground ha in fact gone on strike!! We weren’t sure if we could get home. Fortunately, we caught one of the last tube to our area.

Hungry again, we decided to check out Hell Pizza. It was really good and seemed like a really hip local joint. Definitely worth checking out. Tuesday they have all you can eat pizza for £6. They have a lot of gourmet pizzas that they hand out an the place was packed. We decided to carry out and eat at the hotel.

This was a few days ago but I just have not had a chance to blog. We woke up Monday and I wanted a “forever” memory of being in London. So I got my nose peirced near Kings Road the dude was so cool. When we say we are form So Cal people here drool. It’s a dream for them and London is a dream for us. It’s pretty funny. After that we went to Camden Town. It seems London Punk is alive and well there. They had these markets set up with all the punk style. We had some lunch and left to find tickets to Paris. Well, we didn’t book in advance so we really couldn’t afford it. We decided to buy a tour to Stonehenge, Windsor Castle, and Bath. After we set that up we hung out in Westminster. We ate yummy noodles and waited for the sun to go down so we could see Big Ben light up. It took forever because the sun sets about 9:30 here. It was a ton of walking but a wonderful day.