July 26 – July 29, 2007, London : We flew from Saint Petersburg to London via Stockholm on the 26th. We almost had to leave Laura behind- her passport says her surname is “Fleming” but her ticket said “Stark”. It took a while to convince them to look at the appropriate page. Saint Petersburg has a tiny airport for such a large city – smaller than terminal 1 at San Jose, with a bar but no restaurant. We lunched on potato chips, chocolate, and beer to use up our rubles.
Despite all the flooding stories in the news, it’s beautiful and sunny here in London. We made the rounds of the usual sites (Tower, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace), all of which are jam packed with tourists. At the abbey, Sierra stood on Charles Dickens without so much as a by-your-leave. Don got told off by a bobby for climbing on top of a wall to get a better view of the Guard Recessional near the palace.
We also went up a large observation wheel on the Thames called the London Eye, a holdover from the Millenium celebration. Apparently it has become the largest tourist attraction in London, and is spawning imitators as far off as China.
It’s been a good run, but after six weeks we’re all ready to go home.