Ireland/Scotland 6

Kind and gentle readers, our journey comes to a close.  With the mayhem of the last day and getting home we were unable to update you on our last day in London until now.  Now, safe at home we can fill you in on our last day's activities.

 

Fueling up with a breakfast of yummy toasties (I like mine with ham, onion and tomato-mmmm), we headed straight for the mother ship of shopping, Harrods.  Courtney and I allowed ourselves 1 hour and 15 minutes to finish some last minute shopping and visit the newly opened Laduree in Harrods.  For some reason this didn't tempt Mark and he went to the Starbucks across the street to hang out.  Whatever! (I must proudly admit that I did not step foot in a Starbucks through all of our travels... of course it is probably going to be my first stop this morning though!)

 

After shopping we booked it over to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guards and hear the military band play.  We missed the first part, but did get to see most of the pomp.  I think the oddest moment was when we walked up and the band was playing a recognizable tune.   It was at the corners of my memory and then Mark and I realized it was the theme from Rockford Files.  Really.  When that was done, Courtney and I went behind the palace to visit the Royal Mews to see all of the Queen's carriages and a few of her horses.  It was very cool, but we did a super quick turn through there, so I'm sure we missed something.

 

Then we scooted over to Westminster Abbey to catch the last verger tour of the day (volunteers who work at the abbey are vergers).  We had done this last year and Christina had really enjoyed it, so we thought Courtney would as well.  She liked all of the detail in the building, and it was actually neat to be able to tie together things we learned on other tours in Scotland and Ireland as we went through London.  They were busy fixing and re-guilding the coronation chair which we got to watch.  And when the verger talked about the fact that under the seat was a space for the Scottish stone of destiny that had recently been returned to the Scottish people, we could say that we actually had seen the stone of destiny not 48 hours earlier.  Pretty cool.

 

We were wiped out by this point and so headed back to the hotel for a quick afternoon nap to prep for a night of Macbeth at the Globe.  It was a great performance, and Courtney really enjoyed it.  We were very happy to have seats too.  Not only was it threatening rain (open air theatre) but they had rigged a sort of contraption that all of the people standing for the performance were supposed to stand in.  Basically there was a stretchy fabric tarp suspended at around shoulder height across the whole groundling section with holes cut out in various places for people to pop their heads through.  It was funny looking at an entire audience below us of just heads.  We thought it was for the rain, but as the play started we discovered it was part of the performance, and would keep the standers from getting too much blood, pee (water really) or flying body parts on them.  It also concealed various performers until they popped up for the play.  It was an interesting effect.

 

Then we headed back to the hotel for a late dinner in the bar and to finish packing.  We had an eneventful, though long, trip home and again were so happy to be in business class where it was so much more civilized and comfortable!  All in all we had a great time, and feel so lucky to have spent this much time with Courtney and have so many special memories together.  On the way home she was reading a book she bought in London called Sh*t My Dad Says (which btw is hysterical- check out his website too!), and she was just laughing out loud as she was reading.  It's funny to hear that she still has pretty much the same laugh now as she did when she was a baby and I could get her laughing.  That didn't seem so long ago, and here she is about to be a high school sophomore.  Crazy!

 

Anyway- thanks for joining us on our journey.  We promise to bore you all with pictures soon!

 

Auntie L, Uncle Monky and the Courtster