London: Day Five

Getting ready to wave

We’ll start off today’s post with four videos.

The first are of the street performers at Piccadilly Circus that Sammy mentioned in yesterday’s blog. Sorry, but you’ll have to navigate to them to watch:

Video 1 (Piccadilly Circus street performers)

Video 2 (Piccadilly Circus street performers)

Next is just a taste of Beanie throwing an emotional fit. These don’t usually involve kicking and screaming and flailing (though this happens). Her signature eruptions involve deep grunts and growls (like the Exorcist movies, but without the vomit), destruction (she will throw everything off the table), and occasionally spitting (though I didn’t capture this on video). She usually slams her fists down and knocks everything off the table very violently. Was I provoking her a bit in this video? Yes, but this was a mild ‘incident’ and I wanted to capture the magic on film.

Video 3 (Beanie flips the cuss out)

The last video is of some good street performers in Covent Garden (right where our apartment is). These guys were pretty impressive. Keep in mind that the floor is stone. Many of these performers get up on high ropes and juggle knives. If they fall, there is no net. This part of this guy’s act was impressive.

Video 4 (Covent Garden performer)

Ok, moving on …. Notice I’ve added hyperlinks to various text through so that you can see what some of these places look like:

Today was fun and a little more relaxing. We still were constantly moving, but we didn’t spend too much time on the tubes today. As we were getting ready to leave the flat, Sabine made it clear that she was going to take her purse. She kept getting mad when we’d strap it on her stroller, because she constantly wants to have it on her shoulder.

Ready to go

Once we got to the Underground, Elliott was ready to wave as usual. I’ve been having him wave at the train conductors as the train pulls in to see how many wave back. I think we at about 50% right now. On another note (random thought), on 4 separate occasions today (not exaggerating, it was exactly 4), people mistook Elliott for a girl due to his hair. Either he’s cutting it short (against his will) or growing a beard.

Anyways, the first thing we did was go to Green Park (though due to a warm and dry summer, it wasn’t very green) for a coffee and to let the kids run around. As is become common practice, they get very brave when they’re together, and will run off into the wilderness without a care in the world. Sammy was off getting coffee (which was really crappy by the way), and the kids kept running. So instead of chasing them, naturally, I took pictures. At one point, Elliott did something that pissed Beanie off something awful. She did her typical ‘mad stance’ as I call it. She stands firm, puts her head down with a grumpy look, and will not move or acknowledge anything around her, even if calling her name. It was pretty funny, because she did this while holding her purse, and the people around us thought it was pretty funny.

Brave kids in the distance

The next thing we did was head to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard. This was kind of a let-down for numerous reasons. Not that the ceremony wasn’t cool, but you couldn’t really see anything and there were too many rude people that would jump in front of us and the kids to take pictures and see stuff. So, we saw the band come in and play a little bit, but couldn’t see anything related to the actual changing of the guard. The kids were getting restless, so we made the decision to just watch it on YouTube and note that we were there. Done.

This was pretty much our view the whole time

Something we’d booked a few days ago was a tour of the Buckingham Palace state rooms. These are one of the main parts of the Palace where the royal family hosts fancy-pants parties with fancy-pants people. And they presumably do fancy-pants things. Luckily, the Queen and her homies go away from the last week of July until the first of October and this is the only time they open these to the public.  It was a bit pricey, but it was pretty cool. Did the kids have any fun? No. We moved through it quite quickly and ended up in royal garden to the back of the Palace. This was kind of a let down, as they didn’t let us see much and most of it was brown and dying. Once again, due to the weather this summer. It’s at least nice to know that the tax payers’ money isn’t going to the upkeep of the Queen’s lawn.

Beanie takes pleasure in feeding Elliott and others.

After the gardens, we went to Harrods. I actually went in this time. It was interesting I suppose, but not the type of place where I’d like to hang out for a long period of time, unless I’d planned on buying an $800 jacket or something. We bought some bread for breakfast and chocolates though. Pretty good. One of the stores from Bruges had a stand there, so we bought some of their goods for the sake of nostalgia.

In the Buckingham Palace gardens

After Harrods, we decided to go back to the flat at about 3pm-ish to chill a bit. The kids were still wild and I tried to take a nap. In other words, I wasn’t able to take a nap. The weather was pretty nice today (high 60′s maybe?), so we headed into the Piazza to shop and see some street performers. We walked around for a bit and got sucked into the performance that I posted a video of. After that, the kids ate Belgium waffles and Sammy and I each had jacket potatoes.

Easy

After the potatoes and waffles, we headed back to the room to get the kids bathed and ready for bed. Nothing too exciting there, except for what Beanie did. I was supposed to keep her wrapped up in a towel to dry off, but she really wanted out. So I obliged. And she ran into the kitchen naked. And then she peed. And Elliott got naked and sat there and laughed. And Sammy told me to help her. So I did, right after I got out the iPhone to snap a couple of pictures.

Pee!

After putting Elliott to bed, we realized that you can hear the entire production of Chicago (the theatre is right by our apartment) our the window. And that is all for this evening. I leave you with the following picture of Beanie posing while on the way to Harrods.

Sabine at Hyde Park

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