My life improved 110 percent on Wednesday with the arrival of Favourite Aunt Carrie! We love Aunt Carrie for lots of reasons, but knowing that my days of dragging three kids around London all by myself were officially over made me want to fall on her neck and cry.
We kept Caroline's first day easy and ventured just up the street to 221B Baker Street, where there's a museum dedicated to that super sleuth Sherlock Holmes.
Johnny looks the part, doesn't he?
The museum is a row house that's been made to look as it might have if Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson had actually lived there during Victorian times. It's full of "artifacts" from his famous cases and has kitschy wax figures meant to depict famous scenes. Here are the kids and Favourite Aunt Carrie in the sitting room.
Johnny liked the medical equipment in Watson's room and Holmes' collection of weird animals and other natural history artifacts.
One of the rooms had cases full of objects -- some of them gruesome -- from the stories. I have to admit it was hard to remember that this was all fiction.
They even had the Hound of the Baskervilles!
The best part, though, was the book full of actual letters people have written to Sherlock Holmes. I loved one by a 5-year-old boy, who wrote that he understood that the "lads of London" often helped him in his cases. He wrote (I'm paraphrasing a bit) "I'm writing to tell you that I'm at your service at any time you might need my help." Another kid wrote to warn him that she'd seen Moriarty on the bus. She asked him to be careful, because she feared for his safety. Awesome.
Samuel wasn't as excited about 221B Baker Street as the rest of us (he had already been there with John, after all) and did a lot of whining. A new bus made him happy, though. He drove it all over the floor of the gift shop and around the window at this Beatles shop down the street.
Caroline and I had planned to see Henry V at Shakespeare's Globe that night, but tickets were sold out -- even standing tickets, which we hadn't expected. We bought tickets for another night, though, and then walked along the Thames from the Globe down to Westminster Bridge and then crossed over to Big Ben before heading home. It turned out to be a fun evening, even though we didn't get to see the show.
The next day we took a detour on our way to the British Museum to fulfill one of Johnny's dreams. We stopped at King's Cross railway station and found Platform 9 3/4! It was so fun. Here's Johnny on his way to meet the Hogwarts Express.
Watching other tourists was almost as much fun as being geeky ourselves. There was this one couple, probably in their mid-20s, who were both so excited. They took tons of pictures of each other pushing the trolley and then just stood around grinning for ages.
While the kids and I were in the bathroom, Caroline overheard a walking tour and we rushed to try to follow them to where some of the movies' scenes were filmed. We couldn't catch up with them, but Johnny swears he caught a glimpse of the Hogwarts Express. It's not visible to muggles, you know.
We spent the afternoon at the British Museum, where we saw the gold medal for this summer's Olympics (which we'd missed at our last visit) and lots of other things. Caroline said she was experiencing artifact overload by the end of the day.
The kids were so good, though, that we rewarded them with extremely tasty waffles from a street vendor. They were covered in Belgian chocolate (the children and the waffles). Delicious! (the waffles)
That night, Caroline was so kind as to watch the kids so John and I could go see the London Symphony Orchestra perform Beethoven's Symphony No. 5. It was incredible. The concert started with two arias from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde and Berg's Three Fragments from Wozzek.
The first pieces were fantastic, and the soprano who performed with the orchestra was really great, too. But the Fifth Symphony was absolutely breathtaking. The London Symphony is one of the best orchestras in the world, and hearing them play that masterpiece was just incredible. It's hard to describe the feeling.
More to come!
We kept Caroline's first day easy and ventured just up the street to 221B Baker Street, where there's a museum dedicated to that super sleuth Sherlock Holmes.
Johnny looks the part, doesn't he?
The museum is a row house that's been made to look as it might have if Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson had actually lived there during Victorian times. It's full of "artifacts" from his famous cases and has kitschy wax figures meant to depict famous scenes. Here are the kids and Favourite Aunt Carrie in the sitting room.
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| some of Holmes' pipes and the "VR" left from his target practice |
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| the sitting room |
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| Watson's diary, in which he describes famous cases |
They even had the Hound of the Baskervilles!
The best part, though, was the book full of actual letters people have written to Sherlock Holmes. I loved one by a 5-year-old boy, who wrote that he understood that the "lads of London" often helped him in his cases. He wrote (I'm paraphrasing a bit) "I'm writing to tell you that I'm at your service at any time you might need my help." Another kid wrote to warn him that she'd seen Moriarty on the bus. She asked him to be careful, because she feared for his safety. Awesome.
Samuel wasn't as excited about 221B Baker Street as the rest of us (he had already been there with John, after all) and did a lot of whining. A new bus made him happy, though. He drove it all over the floor of the gift shop and around the window at this Beatles shop down the street.
Caroline and I had planned to see Henry V at Shakespeare's Globe that night, but tickets were sold out -- even standing tickets, which we hadn't expected. We bought tickets for another night, though, and then walked along the Thames from the Globe down to Westminster Bridge and then crossed over to Big Ben before heading home. It turned out to be a fun evening, even though we didn't get to see the show.
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| Shakespeare's Globe |
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| St. Paul's Cathedral from across the Thames |
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| signpost near the Globe |
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| St. Paul's and the Millennium Bridge |
The next day we took a detour on our way to the British Museum to fulfill one of Johnny's dreams. We stopped at King's Cross railway station and found Platform 9 3/4! It was so fun. Here's Johnny on his way to meet the Hogwarts Express.
Watching other tourists was almost as much fun as being geeky ourselves. There was this one couple, probably in their mid-20s, who were both so excited. They took tons of pictures of each other pushing the trolley and then just stood around grinning for ages.
While the kids and I were in the bathroom, Caroline overheard a walking tour and we rushed to try to follow them to where some of the movies' scenes were filmed. We couldn't catch up with them, but Johnny swears he caught a glimpse of the Hogwarts Express. It's not visible to muggles, you know.
We spent the afternoon at the British Museum, where we saw the gold medal for this summer's Olympics (which we'd missed at our last visit) and lots of other things. Caroline said she was experiencing artifact overload by the end of the day.
The kids were so good, though, that we rewarded them with extremely tasty waffles from a street vendor. They were covered in Belgian chocolate (the children and the waffles). Delicious! (the waffles)
That night, Caroline was so kind as to watch the kids so John and I could go see the London Symphony Orchestra perform Beethoven's Symphony No. 5. It was incredible. The concert started with two arias from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde and Berg's Three Fragments from Wozzek.
The first pieces were fantastic, and the soprano who performed with the orchestra was really great, too. But the Fifth Symphony was absolutely breathtaking. The London Symphony is one of the best orchestras in the world, and hearing them play that masterpiece was just incredible. It's hard to describe the feeling.
More to come!
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