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We got up bright and early to try to get to the London Eye
when it opened at 9:00AM.
 We had a little extra time so
we took the tube to Green Park. It rained during the night and was grey and
windy. Chu-Wan was quite pleased, this was the change of weather from Arizona's
that she ha been hoping for. Green Park was quite lovely, but looked like there
had been a riot there the previous day, with garbage strewn all over the place.
We walked to the far end of the park and stumbled across Buckingham Palace. We
didn't stick around for the changing of the guard as we needed to get to the
London Eye before then.
Snag One: The London Eye was already sold out for the entire
day. We tried to buy tickets for Monday but that too was already sold out. We
finally bought tickets for August 2nd in the morning. August
2nd was to be our last full day in London, after returning from
Scotland.
Instead we took the tube out to Richmond Park, a huge park
outside London, where we spent most of the day.
The park was originally a royal hunting park and we
encountered the herds of deer that still inhabit it. We left the park to
explore the adjacent commons. Actually, I liked the "natural" setting of the
common more than the park. The park was nice, but had an artificial, manicured
feel to it.
 At one point on our way back
through the park, we cut across the meadow and skirted a large stand of
shoulder-high grass. As we walked around it, we encountered a large buck who
was standing just inside the grass. He was as startled as we were and bolted
past us, no more than 6 feet away. Signs were posted in the park indicating
that it was rutting season for the deer and that it was very dangerous to get
close to them at this time. This just added to the thrill of the surprise
encounter.
On the way back from Richmond, a criminal suspect escaped
onto the subway tracks and power was cut off to parts of the subway so the
police could pursue him. We were stranded.
We were at the Sloane Square station when they powered down,
so, with nothing else to do, we decided to walk around.
Owning to a slight miscalculation in direction, we headed
off towards nowhere fast, and after an hour of walking, we finally made it back
to a working subway station. Some of the lines were still closed because of the
police hunt.
We'd both had too much walking this day so we returned to
the hotel for a rest.
Later we went foraging for food and had the best food we'd
had yet in England: Lebanese food. |
