You last heard about Oxford, the Cotswolds, and Wales. Now we are in London, and have been here since Friday the 25. We settled into Sharona's house that day, and did nothing much more.
On Saturday, we went to Kings Cross Station where I got a picture:
Zane insists that he's a Ravenclaw, but he seems like more of a Hufflepuff to me.
Westminster Abbey (we went past, but it was about to close, so we didn't go in.)
Big Ben. The picture is only of the top of it because it has scaffolding all over the rest of it.
Can you find the pigeon?
It has been abnormally warm and sunny in London. I caught this horse panting...I felt bad for it.
Pigeons were everywhere.
My dad was...interested in this goose.
The birds at the pond were cleaning themselves
The guards at Buckingham Palace were inside the gates, unreachable by annoying, prodding, poking, and selfie-ing tourists.
My dad told me it would be funny if we photoshopped a barrel underneath this guard's feet.
On Sunday, I SAW HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD!!!!!! I WAS SO CHEERFUL, JOYOUS, DELIGHTED, GLEEFUL, THRILLED, AMAZED, OVERJOYED, ELATED, ECSTATIC, AND JUBILANT. And I remained happy the entire day. I am so so so grateful to my parents for giving me this amazing experience. I will not say much about the actual play though, as J. K. Rowling wishes that I #keepthesecrets. Even if you have read the book/screenplay, there are other surprises in the actual play that are truly magnificent. Things that I will say, and are not spoilers at all are: I LOVE SCORPIUS'S CHARACTER!!!! The acting was really good. The people at the play (audience members) were less rude than most crowds. Even though it was a 5 hour long play split into two parts, it felt like only 1.5 hours. I didn't want it to end. THE FEELS. I wouldn't recommend the play to people under the age of 10, especially if they get nightmares (Zane would have gotten them because he has a wild imagination).
I loved the cute Hufflepuff signs...they're clever
In between the two parts my mom and I went out to eat at an italian restaurant.
Me next to the Ravenclaw sign because I'm a Ravenclaw
The golden colored tickets to get into the Cursed Child were like the Willy Wonka golden tickets to me; tickets into paradise.
Dad insisted on pictures before the show...
While I was with my mom at the play, the boys went to the mall. My dad wrote this, and told me to put it in the blog:
While sweet Autumn and Nicole spent the day taking in the next chapter in the Harry Potter saga, we boys took in an all American day of going to the mall and watching a movie. Sounds a bit silly to travel across the pond to spend the day doing something I would dread back home. But the kids needed shoes, and they wouldn't stop yammering on about seeing Despicable Me 3. We also needed to arrange getting yellow fever shots* that we neglected to get before we left and that can be administered in a mall here in the UK.
One of the best things about travelling is that even the most mundane activities are worth an observation in another country. Sometimes it's interesting to observe how similar it is to our culture, and it's definitely interesting when it's not. In this case, this mall could have been any-town USA, but what I found most striking was the diversity. By far, London has turned out to be the most diverse city I have ever visited. It was a kaleidoscope of race and culture, and it fascinated me. If Mork landed here, he wouldn't know if he was in America, Iran, India, France, Ethiopia, Russia, China, Australia, or the United Kingdom for that matter (assuming he didn't know the Pound was British currency).
Oh, spoiler alert, DM3 was nowhere near as good as the first (a classic in animation, IMHO).
* "Shots" are called "Jabs" here in jolly old England. You decide which sounds more inviting.
On Monday, we went to the London carnival for the Bank holiday. (For some reason we always end up in places when they have festivals going on...Amsterdam Pride and Edinburgh Fringe to name a few.)
I like this picture.
Everyone in the parade was so happy. They were dancing, singing, and laughing.
The next two pictures show my two types of luck when it comes to picture taking.
There were so many feathers and jewels in the parade.
The boys (brothers) were getting tired of watching the parade so we went to Hyde Park. Dad found a weird piece of playground equipment...he calls it the Bowl Full of Belly Laughs.
Some pictures of some birds:
This was princess Diana's monument; a human-made ever-flowing stream for humans to play in. Mom, Dad, Zane, and Bryce all enjoyed dipping their feet in to cool them off from the hot day. I didn't really feel like taking my shoes and socks off, so I stayed on the grass inside the circle.
A heron was by the monument.
Yesterday we went to St. Paul's cathedral. These are the steps that were used in the filming of the way up to Professor Trelawney's divination classroom.
Using a different staircases, we made our way up the different galleries in the central dome of the cathedral. Here are some photos of the views:
Here's the cathedral from the front.
We had to take our family selfie like this because 2.5 members of our family are scared of heights. Dad and Zane get a not-so-good urge to throw themselves off of the high point, and Bryce was just scared of the fact that he could fall. They were all pushing themselves up against the building, and death gripping the raining when we were walking around up there. The three also had some difficulty climbing up and down one of the metal spiral staircases that is inside the dome because it was all open on the sides.
You can't really tell, but the Tower Bridge is in the middle of the circle. Bryce has an odd fascination with the Tower Bridge and the London Bridge.
On our way to the mall, we stopped at an arepas stand. Arepas are like Venezuelan pitas, with a cornmeal-like bread instead of flour. We've had them before this because my parent's friends are from Venezuela, and they're REALLY good!
At the mall we got our vaccinations for Yellow Fever. We all agree that it hurt when it happened, but none of us are sore, which is good. We ate dinner at the food court, and I got dosa, which is Indian. It was good, but not as good as Sunder and Kaitlyn Srinivasan's dosas.
Today I'm staying home because of a stomachache while everyone sees the Tower of London and some museums. Sharona works from home, so she's with me. She's really nice and she got us pizza. :) I've been catching up on school, and I'm starting to get ahead so that I won't be so behind at the end of our Tanzanian safari. I'm excited for the safari because I'll be seeing African animals in the wild on my 13th birthday (September 20), but I'm also nervous about how it will go. I'm nervous about the chance (however slim it may be because of our vaccinations and medicine) that we could get a disease there. I'm also sad that I won't be able to see my friends on my 13th birthday, but being on a safari on my birthday is pretty cool.
