Part One is here.
Part Two is here.
Before I continue the narrative, I’ll give you a few house swap particulars. The English family asked whether we could limit our use of the dryer, and I did my best to comply. Because the washer is so small, and because we packed so lightly (each of us brought four outfits), I did two loads per day to keep up with the laundry. There was a clothesline in the backyard, and with the English humidity, it seems to take close to 24 hours to get things totally dry. Of course, when it rained, we brought everything inside and hung it up around the ground floor. It was kind of a nice thing, though, and I've pondered ever since we got home whether I might want to install a clothesline here at home. We’ll see. So, by the end of our trip, we had used the dryer for a total of 60 minutes.
The kitchen was pretty and perfectly adequate for a family of four, but it was not very practical for the volume of cooking I do. We made do, however, and either cooked or packed almost all of our meals. This, as in France, saved us a bundle of money.
Back to the narrative. Day 7 was a Sunday. We decided to go to church near Hyde Park in London, then meet our fabulous friend Carmen at the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, have lunch, then go to the National Gallery together. The Hyde Park LDS Church building is awesome. It was built in 1961, with completely unorthodox architecture and a gorgeous pipe organ. Sacrament Meeting was outstanding. Afterward, Patrick said hello to the organist, who is a former colleague of his father's, and who is now serving a mission in London with his wife. Then we ducked out.
We walked along Rotten Row in Hyde Park, passed Speaker's Corner, then crossed Park Lane and headed into Green Park. There were masses of people waiting around the gates of Buckingham Palace, waiting to see the changing of the guard. We kept going so that we could be on time to meet Carmen, but we did get to see and hear the band parading down The Mall on their way to the Palace. Anne LOVED the bearskin hats the soldiers wear, and she clapped happily in time to the march the band played.
We passed through the Admiralty Gate and into Trafalgar Square. It’s much cleaner than the last time I was in London, and there are far fewer pigeons. How did the powers that be manage that? I do know that there are now stiff fines imposed for feeding the pigeons, or “rats with feathers,” as Patrick calls them.
We met Carmen in the Crypt of St. Martin’s. The Crypt has an outstanding and very reasonable buffet lunch; I discovered this on my first trip to London 15 years ago. We fed ourselves and the kids and laughed our heads off with Carmen. Then we went up into the church itself to show the kids. The choir of one of the Chinese congregations that meets there was practicing: very cool. Then we walked across the street to the National Gallery.
Heaven. How I love the scores of Dutch paintings: the Vermeers and Rembrandts, and lots of other lesser known artists. My favorites are the interiors of churches with which the Dutch seemed fascinated: the photorealistic colors and precise rendering of architecture. And the light. How is it done?
And I swooned over the Hans Holbein paintings. Holbein rocks my world. His work is in the same room as The Madonna of the Rocks, and while everyone else gawked at the Leonardo, I communed with the glory that is Hans. Fantastic. The images don't do the originals justice.
VERY funny moment when we were in the Impressionist gallery. Daniel was thrilled to recognized Monet’s Japanese bridge and water lilies from our trip to Giverny last year,
but then we came to the painting below.
Daniel tugged on my sleeve (I was talking to Carmen) and said urgently, “Mom, Mom, a bad thing!” I asked him what was the matter. He pointed at the painting and asked in a very dramatic voice, “WHAT HAPPENED HERE?”
I explained how Monet’s eyesight began to fail him in later years, but that he still painted every day, and that his work got wilder and more dramatic as a result. Daniel was a little crestfallen at this. It was much less exciting an explanation than his theory that monster plants had taken over Monet's precious garden.
After a couple of hours in the museum, Anne had hit her limit. And really? She had been pretty patient, all things considered. We went back to Green Park and sat on the grass so that the kids could run around for a bit while we continued visiting with Carmen. After another hour, we decided to head home.
Once there, we packed very lightly for our overnight trip to Liverpool the next day. I didn’t want to take anything other than backpacks, so I told everyone to bring a T-shirt and clean underwear, along with a book to read on the train. And toothbrushes. Those essentials, and a well-stocked diaper bag and the stroller, and we were set.
Day 8: Monday. We got to Euston Station—the London station for Liverpool trains—with no problem the next morning. The trains are a marvel: clean, comfortable, quiet. Why don’t we do this on our continent? It is a puzzlement. The ride was 2 hours and 7 minutes long. I didn’t know how Anne would handle it, but she loved the train. Since there are no seatbelts, she could climb around a bit, look out the windows at cows and sheep, and visit with everyone in the family easily.
Once we got to Liverpool, we had to hustle to check into our rooms at The Hard Day’s Night Hotel, because we wanted to take The Magical Mystery Tour, which leaves once a day from the Albert Dock at 2:30 p.m. We had to pause for a moment, though, because the hotel was a) very swanky; and b) adorably thorough—but not cheesy—in its homage to The Beatles. It’s right around the corner from The Cavern Club, where the lads played more than 290 times.
The Tour was fantabulous. Our tour guide was in his mid-thirties, extremely energetic, and an encyclopedia of all things Beatle-related. We drove past the childhood homes of all four lads; saw Strawberry Field and Penny Lane; and heard story after story of the musicians we love so well, all told imaginatively and in the captivating Liverpudlian accent. The tour was pricey, but SO worth it. Anne fell asleep on my lap, the first time she had done so on the trip thus far. I was glad that she could get an extra hour of rest, poor thing.
Patrick and I had thought Liverpool would be a total dud, and really only planned the overnight trip to humor Christian. How happy we were to be proved totally wrong. Liverpool is a delightful place: cool architecture, good food, and tons to see. The Anglican Cathedral was a trip: it’s GIGANTIC, and looms over the docks in very majestic fashion. Love. It.
We had thought we’d do the Tour, see the Beatles museum, then sleep at the hotel and head back to London early the next morning. After the Tour, we changed our minds and decided to stay a little longer, leaving Tuesday afternoon instead.
We went to dinner at a gastropub on the dock at which kids ate free. AWESOME. Fish and chips all around, thank you very much. Then we went back to The Cavern and went down to check it out. A John Lennon impersonator was doing creditable covers, and the crowds were swinging their beer glasses and singing along. Back at the hotel, I told Patrick I wanted to put the little kids to bed and have him take the big boys out to hear some more music. He reluctantly agreed; he thought I’d appreciate the music more, but we both knew that Anne would go down in a strange hotel room more easily for me.
The menfolk headed out, and I supervised baths for everyone else. When all were clean, I put on A Hard Day’s Night on Pay-Per-View for Hope, Tess, and Daniel in their room, then put Anne down in our room (the big boys had their own room in between). After the movie was over, H, T, and D went happily to bed. Anne had crashed. In the meantime, P had emailed me, saying that the music scene was a bust. After 6pm, you had to be over 18 to get into the pubs. I encouraged him to stay out and bond with the boys, so they went to the movie theater and saw Inception. C hadn’t seen it yet, and they had a great time.
I, meanwhile, reveled in the peace and quiet. No laundry or dishes to do; no kids to wrestle; no next day to plan. I sat in my serene hotel room and knitted, while the portrait of John looked on approvingly.
The next day, after a terrific buffet breakfast at the hotel restaurant—
Where they had on the wall a picture of every single person featured on the cover of the Sergeant Pepper’s album cover, along with a brief bio—pure heaven for trivia geeks like me and the rest of the fam—
We went to The Beatles Museum. It is very well done and comprehensive to the minutest detail. Anne and I spent a lot of time playing on The Yellow Submarine exhibit and watching the Ringo Starr-narrated clips of Thomas the Tank Engine. Everyone else did the full-on audio tour. We all got T-shirts at the gift shop.
BugWorld was next: a museum of all kinds of exotic and very large critters. The kids held giant cockroaches, millipedes, and snails; saw the insides of the nests of termites, leaf cutter ants, and bees; and played cool computer games that simulated the habits of all kinds of insects and arachnids. Everyone from Christian to Anne was into it. Huge score.
We went back to the hotel, collected the backpacks, and walked to the train station. I shopped for lunch at Marks & Spencer, the swanky grocery chain. I shopped hungry, and we had quite the deluxe lunch on the train as a result. We got back to Twickenham in the late afternoon and chilled, marveling in our good fortune.