Yeah, english again. Although I still don’t understand everything said to me and crossing the road is kind of like crossing in Amsterdam. Look both ways constantly. At least bicycles hear don’t seem to think running over pedestrians is a great sport. Wayne and Maggie are going to design t-shirts for amsterdam with bike tread running across them with the tread spelling out Amsterdam! Million dollar idea!!!

I find I’ve stopped listening to voices around me just assuming that I won’t understand what’s being said anyway. Our London flat bedroom is right on a busy street and only on the first floor (2nd floor in the U.S.) so we hear lots of conversations, traffic and sirens. I still don’t understand much even when I try. I do try to pick out passing motorcycles by exhaust sound though!

I’m just going to tack on a few pictures I took from the bus our first couple days.

Some kind of naval office? The tour commentary didn’t say what the building housed. But it was on a government street.

Good example of London’s eclectic mix of old and new architecture. Mostly thanks to WWII.

Whoo Hoo! can cross the London Eye off my to do list.

I know we’ve been in London a few days now but takes my some time to process everything we’ve seen and experienced.

Lasting impressions of Sweden-

Total shock on cashiers faces when I didn’t speak Swedish. Lots and lots of clusters of red houses, barns and sheds, lakes, rivers, fascinating fences and for my junior high friends lots of signs announcing farts 🙂

Rock mystery to ad to our sheds on stilts mysteries of central Sweden.

oh, and the mystery of the hobbit holes. We’re guessing a root cellar. These were all over in the mountain area.

Several churches had hedge rows in the cemetry.

Picnic lunch on our way to the airport. If it didn’t get eaten it was getting tossed. Not taking food to London with us!

Quaint and sturdy fencing. Mostly found in historic areas of rural Sweden.

Just pretty 🙂

Special pictures for my friend who spends his days with Junior high kids 🙂

We missed one by a school that said “kinderfart” 😉

The joy of everyone speaking English still hasn’t worn off. This morning (well, “morning” being noon – we slept in!) when we went into the Museum of London, a cheery man greeted us in English. Stunned me a little, actually. Apparently there are over 300 languages spoken in London, so public transport is 50% or less English.
But the museum. It covered the history of London from the people who lived there over 2000 years ago to the modern times. It was an impressive collection, but a lot of the things had small print: “Replica – original at British Museum”
No pictures from the Museum of London, but we did wander over to St. Paul’s cathedral. In terms of of favorite buildings, it’s a close second to the Notre Dame.

The small side entrance

Massive front door with dad for scale. Princess Diana walked through there for her wedding!

Unfortunately, like Highclere Castle, you can’t take pictures inside and it cost a lot to get in. We poked our heads inside the door and gazed around for a few minutes. Everything is carved of marble so it’s a lot brighter than the Notre Dame.

Tomorrow morning the boys are off the Venice for a few days, leaving us girls to do girly things like explore the Parliament buildngs.

Today was another day full of history and exploring. We hit the Tower of London fairly early and got in before a lot of crowd. The Tower is actually the collective name for a big medieval fortress.
This is the actual Tower. It is the oldest structure in the fortress and was completed in 1078 – 11 years after William the Conquer invaded to provide him a safe refuge in his newly conquered land.

Within the fortress-

that used to have a moat and everything. It was really cool to walk around a fortress built in 1200 (even if most of it was reconstructed).

From the wall of the Tower of London!

Of course, we had to go see the Crown Jewels. Pictures weren’t allowed, but I can tell you that those are quite the sparkly collection of massive jewels. Tour group after tour group kept coming through by the time we got to the jewels themselves (the building they’re in is set up to shuffle thousands of people past in a day and has quite the winding lead-up) so we got pushed through some of the collections of oversized gold plates and ceremonial pieces.

The rest of the Tower was a lot of walking around looking at old buildings, weapons, and armor. The Tower itself is actually the longest running visitor attraction in the world!
My favorite part was the dragon.

After snapping a picture of a the iconic guard (who was about my age), we hopped on the bus one last time and rode around the city again. We blasted past Piccadilly on our way around too.

But once again didn’t make it to Buckingham Palace.

By that point we were wiped out so we struggled through rush hour on the Tube and headed for home.

Sidenote: Highclere Castle (Downton Abbey) isn’t going to work out. The whole day would cost upwards of 200 pounds, you’re not allowed to take pictures, and it isn’t open on Fridays and Saturdays. So Mom and I toured via the website gallery. It’s pretty.

After three weeks in countries where the only English came after confused pauses, hearing everyone speaking (accented) English is both strange and a relief.
London is amazing. We got in last night and settled into our little apartment. It’s in northeastern London, near what the apartment owner (in a very strong London accent) called “the funky area”.
This morning we hit the streets and turned all our vouchers in for tickets. And then, as is tradition, we got on the hop on hop off bus. It was amazing. Mostly empty with amazing views of all the biggest sights. The only major thing we didn’t get to today was Buckingham Palace.
Unlike Paris, the architecture here is a mash of old and new. Glass skyscrapers are surrounded by brick and marble buildings.

We caught the bus at Trafalagar Square-

Nelson statue in the center of Trafalagar Square

Random blue chicken?

And rode around past the London Eye and a bunch of other pretty things before getting genuine fish and chips.

National Gallery

Afterwards we caught another bus out to the Tower Bridge and Tower of London, which we’ll go into tomorrow. But those two are absolutely stunning. The Tower Bridge is a beautiful baby blue and the Tower of London is a medieval fortress dropped in the middle of a city.

London feels much more serious than Paris (the city we’ve visited of comparable size). There’s also a lack of mopeds/motorcycles, but hundreds of those distinctive red double deckers.

Bullet building

The shard

Our final activity of the day was riding the London Eye: a dream come true. It was beautiful.

View from the very top!

The first day in London was amazing and I can’t wait to see more.

Big Ben!

We’ve been in Sweden for almost two weeks now, and I like it better every day. Dad told you about our mountain biking adventures, but the next day we all piled into the rental car and went out to explore Sweden.

Sheds on stilts! They were everywhere.

True to form, mom pointed out a gravel road not half an hour into our trip and off the freeway we went. It was an old logging road that ended in a round about that was suprisingly clean. An area like this at home would be full of beer cans.

The Swedish forest is really cool. All the trees are very young and thinned out because of all the logging. They also are stripped of their bark halfway up!

We were also surprised to see that the ground cover reminded us of Scotland, even though we’re farther north.

A lot of the roads are reddish, but we couldn’t figure out why until we saw the rocks out in the ‘wilderness’- they all have some mineral in them that makes them red!

Combined with the lichen, it makes for very pretty rocks.

But despite looking our hardest and even honking our horn to try and startle them, we didn’t see any moose. A fox ran across the road at one point, but the only wildlife we got close to were the bugs (Sweden has horseflies too, it turns out. Ouch).

A couple hours drive brought us to the tiny town of Nusnäs (population 729) where they make those colorful wooden horses.

We spent a couple hours there watching the carving and painting process before raiding the souvenir shops. I stupidly bought a blanket that I’ll probably regret buying until the second we get home. Speaking of souvenirs, we’re at the point where we’ll probably have to get a little suitcase just to get them home. Our carry-ons are too small. Whoops.

On our way home, we stopped beside a gorgeous lake to stretch our legs. Mom and I waded a little bit. It was suprisingly warm!

Skipping rocks

Outhouse!

Tomorrow we’re leisurely driving back to Stockholm before catching our plane to London the next day. It’s been a beautiful and relaxing week up here in the mountains. Time to plunge back into a massive city and start touring again!