During any normal week at home Friday is a day of celebration. Ready for the weekend and fun. Friday for us was our last full day in London so we weren’t nearly as excited about it as we normally would be. Saturday meant we’d be back on the plane and headed home. What to do on our last full day?

The Tower of London of course.

We got there early but decided not to race to see the crown jewels. We instead turned up Mint Street and got away from the early crowd. There were lots of educational displays that we had all to ourselves. Really interesting stuff. Once we’d been there for a bit we turned and headed back into the moat area to join up with a Yeoman Tour. If you’re there – take the Yeoman Tour. These guys are fascinating. While we were on the tour our guide told us that one of the former prisoners at the tower was a certain William Penn. I raised a little cheer (Pennsylvania and all that). The guide noticed me and called me out on it. “Just remember, that famous Pennsylvania man was English… and a criminal!” Everyone had a good laugh. Then he continued, “Where are my Australians?” A few folks raised there hands. He pointed one out and yelled to him, “You sir! Go and give that poor American some counseling on what it means to have a criminal background!” It was a really funny bit in the middle of a tour packed with crazy amounts of information.

The crown jewels had a massive line. We worked our way in and got to shuffle past the display. It was impressive. When we got out the line was massive. It was really good to go right from the tour to the jewels. Then it was off to see the famous ravens. The ravens have gotten quite used to being close to people.

We got some great pictures here. It was a really good tour. Totally necessary to see if you’re in London. That took about half of our day. We grabbed some lunch at a Pret and then headed for a lot more photos. It was time to ride the London Eye.

What a massive wheel. The supports were crazy big.

It was a long wait in line… to get tickets so we could go wait in line. That was the most difficult part of the whole thing – it was very crowded. It took a long time to get on. It was also a bit odd that they didn’t stop the wheel when it was time for you to get on. It just keeps slowly turning and you have to hop on as it goes past. That’s one of those little details I somehow doubt would ever work here in the states. It was a great view as expected. The whole ride was smooth and stable.

And somehow, suddenly it was Friday night. We’d had an entire week.

We cleaned up and packed up our room Friday night. We were up and out the door at 5 am on Saturday and headed back home. It was a grueling travel day, but nothing went wrong and I was thankful for that.

Going on this trip was just fantastic. We built memories that will last a lifetime. We saw things and did things together. We took a ton of pictures – despite only being able to post a handful of them here. I can only hope we can scrape together our pennies and save up for another grand adventure.

Thursday of the big London trip we had plans for smaller, off the beaten path type things. We were planning on heading to the Royal College of Physicians to see a special exhibit on John Dee. After we’d finished with that we were headed off to the Silver Vaults. We decided that since one particular wizard was the origin of this trip idea that we’d stop along the way at King’s Cross rail station to see a particular platform where one might head off to a wizard’s school.

The “platform” isn’t really a platform anymore. They’ve moved it up to the concourse area next to a gift shop. There’s a line and a professional photographer. You can still snap your own picture for free – but you’ve got to wait through the line. I’m glad we got to stop here, but it was disappointing to see what the “magical platform” had become.

Not even an arch.

We decided it would be easier to grab a taxi to the exhibit. We didn’t have a clear understanding of what that meant from King’s Cross station. There was of course a line to get a taxi. There’s a line for everything.

We made it to the college and headed in. The exhibit itself was neat and quiet. There was a lot of cool stuff on display. There was a short film that we got to sit and watch. We found out they have a Twitter. I had to check it out despite doing my best to stay away from Twitter. You should check out some of the cool things there too.

One of the neat things the folks at the college did was set up a doodle contest (of sorts). One of the things Dee was known for was writing notes, annotating and doodling in his library collection. There were postcards out that one could doodle on and submit to their monthly contest. The kiddo and I both whipped one up to enter.

I particularly enjoyed the painting. It’s significantly larger than I thought it would be. I love that they’ve discovered part of the painting had been painted over to cover up certain aspects due to the offended sensibilities of the Victorians.

Once we’ve had our fill of the exhibit we headed off to the underground again and found our way over to the Silver Vaults. We stopped along the way in a little sandwich shop for a fantastic lunch. I know I sound like a bit of a broken record, but once we got away from the main tourist stuff we just had such an amazing time. It’s the little things – quiet lunches, finding our way along a new street – that really made this trip so excellent. We passed through private security to get in and headed down to the vault level. NO pictures were allowed. We spent a great deal of time wandering and staring at really expensive silver. A lot of it. One of the shop keepers said it was the world’s largest collection of silver under a single roof. We talked to a handful of the shop keepers. There’s all sorts of history and interesting stuff going on down there. We even got recommendations for other ‘out of the way’ places we should go and visit.

Unfortunately we were all but done in again. Lots of walking, constantly being on the go was starting to take its toll on us. We made every effort to avoid rush hour on the subway and headed back to the hotel. It was difficult to believe we were down to our last day already!

Our day in Cardiff was going to be a tough act to follow. We only had 2 items on the agenda for our Wednesday – going to the British Museum and stopping by Forbidden Planet.

Camera decided to auto-correct and I thought the result was cool.

The British Museum is a lot like the Smithsonian – all piled into one huge building. We headed in around opening time (ten-ish) and wandered around. There are some amazing things on display at the museum. I got to see THE Rosetta Stone, live and in person.

There were so many things I really lost track of it all. We did be sure to have a little fun along the way

Historic Fist Bump

but the sheer number of people there made for a less than perfect experience. I suspect if we hadn’t just had such a magnificent day in Cardiff I might have been more forgiving. I got very, very tired of people bumping into me, people crowding what I was trying to read, people swinging their selfie-stick around with wild abandon. IF we lived closer I suspect we’d go there in much the same way we return to Washington and the Smithsonian here in the states. It was impressive to be sure, but we all struggled with the crowd.

We actually stayed in the museum almost until closing time. When we did come out we wandered a few streets over and found our way to Forbidden Planet! A huge comic shop right in the middle of London. I had this odd notion that I’d be able to wander and chat with staffers and all the kinds of cool things I’d do at any shop like that here at home. I suppose if I were a local I’d probably have had more success – but it was super busy. There were tons and tons of things to see both upstairs and downstairs. I did manage to wander for a while. I even found some works I recognized – and I was sure to face out the books. I also took one moment in there to “hand sell” a friend’s title when I saw a couple of local guys looking for something to read.

I could have spent a lot of time (and likely a lot of money) in there, but it was late in the day and we were all worn out from so many hours of walking. We headed back to the underground and back to the hotel.

For those of you that have seen a certain movie – we hit a point not unlike that of a certain Wade Wilson hit with health care when considering what to eat for dinner. We said something like the same thing he did and headed to the Subway that was across the street….

They had apparently hit the same point. It looked like a trash bomb had gone off in there. They were out of about half of everything. Really one of the two worst dining experiences we had in London. We grabbed our sad and disappointing sandwiches and called it a night.

Thursday had more cool stuff in store!

Tuesday was our big day. We donned our Regeneration Who t-shirts, headed out of the hotel and hopped onto the underground. The underground is a very good way to get around London. It is however old and not necessarily laid out the way you might think. There were times when I thought we were caught in an old Family Circus newspaper comic where the kids took as long as possible to get back home. Up, down, through a tunnel, up and down in the same tunnel and across 2 more escalators and you’re there, no problems. It was a lot of underground walking to go with the train ride. We transferred to the national rail service and rode through the countryside out to Cardiff. I feel the need to say – this was expensive. The train ride itself I mean. I think if we had known before we showed up at the train station we would have balked at the cost. Since we didn’t know, we just forged on ahead.

Arriving at Cardiff was smooth and easy. We chatted with a couple of folks in the station and found that we needed to take the bus on the number 6 route and that would drop us off all but at the front door of our destination.

The bus was not nearly as easy to figure as the underground. We ended up paying more for the tickets to ride than we should have because the bus driver doesn’t make change and we didn’t have change on us. We did arrive all but on the doorstep as promised in just a few minutes.

We had pre-booked our tickets so we walked in with our printed pages and walked directly into the next available spot. I’m certain it was because it was a slow Tuesday, but the people at the desk greeted us by name. “Ah, you must be the Hardenbrook family…” It was very cool. Like I said – I suspect it was because it was a slow day and we booked ahead, but it was still a good feeling and a great way to start. Little extra bits like that make all the difference. All the folks going in head through an interactive… show? I’m not quite sure how to explain it, but it was a good time. I won’t give away any spoilers on what happens inside but they do make sure to get the “smaller humans” up front for the interactive bits of the show. The VIP tour badges with big crystals stuck on them glow at various times as you move through the whole thing. Sadly these were not for keeping. The kiddo got to be one of the participants while we were in the tour/show part and she was thrilled. I forgot to time how long this was, but it wasn’t overly long.

Once we got out of the show it was on to the exhibit itself. We got a ton of really good pictures in here. Every doctor’s costume, a handful of monsters from the show and all kinds of nifty stuff on display. There were props, sets, documents and even a video loop with the show choreographer. You could learn to march like a Cyberman or walk like one of the scarecrows from Family of Blood. I have no idea how long we spent wandering in there but it was long enough to connect with a couple of the other fans there. We spread the word about the convention and one of the folks we met (a middle school librarian from Texas) actually took down the name and looked up the web site on her phone right away. Everyone was super nice and really friendly. Did I mention a ton of pictures?

Adding my tally marks.

We wandered the exhibit reading and marching like Cybermen and generally having a good time. Like any good tour location, we exited by way of the gift shop. Everything Dr. Who was there. Clothing, key chains, patches, snow globes, DVDs, comics, art, knick-knacks – you name it, they had it (at least if it was still in stock). We had actually picked up a swag bag along with our pre-order tickets so we had a t-shirt and a guidebook and some other things (including a Tardis key) waiting for us.

We spent about 3 hours there from beginning to end. I had a smile on my face the entire time. Smiling and having a great time is exactly why we came on vacation. Today was a good day no matter what else came up – but it was still only around 2 in the afternoon. What else could there possibly be?

Did you know that they have a castle there in Cardiff? IF you’re a fan, you should know…