Tourists In London

  London, United Kingdom
Friday, September 14, 2007

After a restful evening we each discovered we had forgotten to pack something:  John - deodordant and myself - tennis shoes.  After a consultation with the concierge, we set off for Lillywhites to buy myself some "trainers".  The store is 5 stories of sports-related clothing and shoes all at inexpensive to moderate prices (for London).  I managed to find a pair of tennis shoes, sorry, "trainers", for only 9 pounds ($18 USD).

Piccadilly Circus

The store is at Piccadilly circus so we took a few photos of the area that resembles Times Square with the large neon advertising signs.

We stopped for a little lunch then headed to the tube to see the Cabinet War Rooms Museum.  The underground series of rooms was constructed to protect Prime Minister, his Cabinet and the central core of the military command in the event expected air raids in the city.

Now it was time to make our way to the Greenwich area for our 4pm sheduled Planetarium show.  Little did we know it would take us 1 1/2 hours by subway and light rail train, not to mention a long walk up a steep hill.  Because we missed the show, we wandered around the exhibits related to the Prime Meridian.  This place is unique in that it sets Time (Greenwich Mean Time) and Place (Greenwich Meridian). 

Prime Meridian

By now our feet and legs were so tired we decided to head back to the hotel after finding the Sherlock Holmes pub for dinner.  So there was another long ride on the tube and more walking.  The pub, however, was overflowing with working professionals and a lot of them were out on the street.  We chose instead "Little Frankies" which served American & Italian food.  John had a Manhattan burger, fries and chocolate milk shake (which was thinner and more foamy than back home) and I had beer-battered cod, fries and a bottle of Twinings green tea & lemon iced tea.  We grew envious of a nearby table that ordered the Boston Brownie -- brownies, scoops of vanilla ice cream and mounds of whipped cream.  We were too full from dinner for that dessert, but we did get two cannoli for "take away" at a nearby Italian restaurant.  We retired once again to the hotel for relaxing and watching some "tele".  Tomorrow we'll head to Dover to start our long-awaited cruise.