On the first day of our vacation, our flight left at five fifty p.m. We arrived in London at about noon and went to our first hotel. Later that evening, we all went on the London Eye.
This was my favorite of the pictures I took of Big Ben from the London Eye.
The next day we saw a British history museum. I was surprised and confused for a while because what I was hearing made no sense. Like for instance, it talked about being part of the Roman Empire. That's when I realized that we were in England, not the United States, and England was part of the Roman Empire. Next, we took the Chunnel to France. I'll write about all our adventures in France later.
We nearly missed the train back to England from France. We arrived and got in line to go to the train. But it turned out that we needed to fill out Custom cards. After that, we got in to go through security, but we were running late. Fortunately, two families that would be getting on a later train, let us pass them. The guy who checked our passports worked quickly so we wouldn't be late.
We speed walked to security and threw our luggage on the belt (I think it's called the belt) and went through the metal detector. My sister and I got through first and started pulling the suit cases off the belt. Quickly, the rest of my family got through. My mom, my youngest sister, and I each took a suitcase and my dad and my other sister each took a bag.
We ran to our plat form and got on something kind of like an escalator, but that is flat instead of having stairs. Like those moving floors at the airport, except this one was at a downward angle. My dad and sister ran faster without suit cases, so my mom, my other sister, and I were still on the moving floor when my dad and sister were getting on the train.
When my sister, mom, and I got off the moving floor, the conductor blew his whistle (which I learned meant "The train is starting soon" or something like that). We sprinted to the train and hauled our suit cases up the stairs. By the time we got to our seats, the train had started moving.
We arrived at our hotel in London and dropped our stuff off and explored our room. Then, we walked to the somewhat nearby London museum, where we met up with our friends from across the country. We went into the Egyptian exhibit, saw three dead people not including the mummys, and saw the Rosetta stone.
After seeing some more historical items like sculptures, carvings, and an ancient chess board, we went back to our hotel and played alibi (which is a fun game similar to Mofia but the everyone has to say a short sentence of what they did the night of the murder and the killer has to change their's a little each time). Next, we went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant and on the way there and back, talked about a song we're writing about Mystery Slop.
The next day, we ate breakfast in our friends' room and went to the Buckingham Palace. We saw torture devices, the Queen's crown, and the Bloody tower. We took a boat ride and walked past Big Ben. After taking a quick break in the hotel, we took a train, and then a double decker bus to see behind the scenes of the Harry Potter movies productions.
This was me with one of my favorite Harry Potter characters, Buckbeak the Hippogriff. We watched a movie here on how the robotic movie characters like Buckbeak were made.
This was probably the most amazing part of the behind the scenes trip. For the Harry Potter movies, the Hogwarts castle was really green screened in the background. The castle itself was really a huge model. Everything was so precise, a lot of work must have gone into it.
After it was over, we said good-bye to our friends (they were leaving at 5 am the next morning and we weren't going to wake up that early) and went to bed.
The next day, before going to our next hotel, we went to the Buckingham palace and saw the guards. The marching band played "Uptown Funk" while we were there. We also visited the Royal stables in the Royal Mews.
A guard at the Buckingham palace
This was the horse parade during the Ceremony at the Buckingham Palace.
The next two days, we went to a nice hotel in a nice area. It had a lot of buildings and food shops. It was a place that a lot of people took the underground from their homes to that area to work. It had a cool bridge over a river pretty much right outside our hotel. That was probably my favorite part of London.
While we were there, we visited the Prime Meridian.
The line below my feet is the Prime Meridian.
Last, we took a cab to the air port because the underground was on strike. We took a twelve hour flight and got home at 5ish pm. We were exhausted and went to bed at 7.
One thing I noticed in all of Europe was that the pigeons were different there too. There was one pigeon with such dark feathers, I thought it was a crow until I looked at it's head. There were brown pigeons (which were probably my favorites) and even normal looking ones with white feathers on their heads like mohawks.
