Day 9

  London, United Kingdom
Friday, September 26, 2008

Our day began at 5.30 this morning when we were woken by dad to get ready for our trip to London! After getting dressed and cleaning my teeth I finished packing my backpack and helping dad pack the car. Once we had finished washing all the dishes, packing up all the chargers and locking all the doors we piled into the car and left Willingham Street at 6.15am. It was freezing outside and not much warmer in the car so I attempted my best to cuddle up and I eventually fell asleep. I slept for the first leg of the trip until we stopped for petrol and breakfast at a café. I had a bacon and egg baguette which was really good.
 
We then headed back on the road and I pulled out the laptop to send some emails before I listened to my iPod for most of the rest of the trip. After another hour of traveling we were finally informed by dad that we had arrived in London but our journey was no where near over yet. We drove for another hour in the congested London traffic before we finally arrived at the place we were parking our car for the week. Once we had parked and unpacked the car we headed off for our first task - finding a way to get to our hotel. Dad managed to hail a cab down and sent mum, Bronte, Nikita, Noah and 2 of our suitcase off to the hotel. Celeste, dad and I headed further down the street for another 5 minutes before we were able to find another empty cab to take us to the hotel.
 
After a short ride through the busy streets of London we arrived outside the Mentone Hotel just after the other taxi. We dragged our suitcases up the stairs to our rooms and decided how we were going to sleep. Celeste, Bronte and I took the triple room while dad, mum, Nikita and Noah took the quad. After a quick change of clothes and freshening up we headed off for our days activities. Mum took Bronte, Nikita and Celeste off to go on an open bus tour while dad, Noah and I headed off to Lord's Cricket Ground. The three of us headed towards Russell Square where dad showed us a hotel he stayed at the last time he visited England. We walked passed Russell Park before we hailed a taxi and headed off to the ground.
 
We arrived at Lord's at 1.45pm and after purchasing our tickets for the tour we headed into the museum to have a browse before the tour began at 2pm. Our tour began in an area just inside the gate on the grass where the rules of lawn tennis where drawn up. We then traveled into the pavilion and through to the Long Room where it was explained why the ground at Lord's was on a slope. We headed through the bar and up to the visitors change rooms, across the floor that had been walked by every cricket player in history that had been played at Lord's. We sat down in the visitors change room and were told the specific stops that some of the best cricket players sit in when they visit Lord's.
 
We returned to the museum where we heard the story of the creation of the ashes and were able to see the actual ashes. We also learnt that it was because of women that over arm bowling was made legal in cricket because it was impossible for them to bowl underarm with their massive skirts that came into fashion. Next stop on the tour was the grand stand facing the 'old man time' clock before we traveled up to the media box. The media box sits opposite the members pavilion and contains spaces for 120 journalists and 11 television and radio stations.
 
At 4pm our tour came to an end and after saying thank-you we headed to the gift shop before leaving. The three of us then walked down towards Abbey Road to find the famous Abbey Road Crossing. After walking for 10 minutes we eventually arrived at the beginning of Abbey Road. We instantly picked out the crossing as it was surrounded with tourists taking photos and a lot of annoyed motorists having trouble driving across the crossing. Waiting for the perfect moment to take the photos seemed to take forever because you needed to wait for all the cars to have cleared the crossing to get a clear photo of the crossing.

We spent around 30 minutes taking photos of the crossing before we headed for a walk up Abbey Road to try and find the Beatles Abbey Road Recording Studio but unfortunately we never end up finding it. We stopped past a milk bar to buy a snack as we never ended up stopping for lunch before. Dad then decided he wanted to catch a bus back to the hotel so we boarded a random bus hoping that it would drop us off somewhere near the hotel. We ended up getting off somewhere near Oxford Street and after almost another hour walking we eventually arrived back at the hotel.
 
After quick showers and getting ready dad headed out to find Nikita's school teacher from last year who was meeting us for dinner. Once dad had found him we headed for a walk to Russell Square to find a place to have dinner. We eventually decided on going to Pizza Hut and luckily they had two tables of 4 for us to use. Mum and Celeste decided to have nachos, Nikita spaghetti, Bronte and Noah chicken and chips while dad, Mr. Gook and I shared a pizza. When all the food had been eaten we headed off for a walk back to our hotel, stopping at Tesco for ice cream. We spent an hour chatting to Mr. Gook before it was eventually time to say goodbye and head off to bed.