London - Day 3 & Plane Ride to Rome

Yesterday was quite an interesting day in London. After sleeping in slightly later than is proper, we split into two groups to run around the city. As we'd pretty much seen all the big tourist sights the day before, we decided to go probe the museums.

Group "Young Adults" (Steve, Megan, Mike, & Will) checked out the Tate Modern Art Museum and then the National Gallery (the parts we didn't get to see the day before). Tate was certainly interesting; there were things enjoyed and things not enjoyed by each one. We got to find out how interested and authoritative Will is on Cubism. Overall, it was a rewarding experience. Oh, and we got to cross London Bridge (the current one, not the Havasu one) to get there, and saw Sir Francis Drake's ship and Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on the way. From there, we traveled across the Millenium Bridge and took the Underground to the National Gallery. By the end of it all, our legs and feet were very tired, but we got to see some awesome art by some more classical artists. Will and Mike checked out the Impressionists while Megan and I wandered around elsewhere (though I'm not really sure what period we were in).

Group "Young and Old" (Dad, Mom, Ian, & Daniel) checked out the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum. We started at what might be the largest and most architecturally striking natural history museum in the world. We checked out Darwin's section and saw Lucy, one of the potential missing links. But she was too short to be a missing link to Uncle Dave. They had a tremendous section showing the different stages of human development (this is where we snapped a picture of Daniel with a 7 foot tall fetus). We next visited the science museum where they had endless cool interactive displays for Ian and Daniel (and Dad) with a very cool history of medicine floor for Mom. On the lighter side, Mom and Daniel visited a fun live butterfly exhibit while Ian and Dad discovered the only pigeon in the world with a goiter below its beak (we named it a Goiterbird since we discovered it).

After our day at the museums, we all met up for the fanciest Pizza Hut dinner I've ever had. It was a nice sit down restaurant with Pizza Hut pizza, but also fancy appetizers, and we even got wine with dinner (At Pizza Hut!). The most interesting part of dinner was that when Megan sat down, she hung her purse on the back of her chair, but when she got up to leave, it wasn't there! We searched high and low, but no luck. So, we cancelled the cards and her phone (which we later found out was actually back at the hotel anyway). All in all, the only things of value that were stolen were our brand new camera and the purse itself (which ironically enough is supposed to be a pick-pocket-proof purse); everything else is very replaceable.

However... We got a call while boarding our plane today from a British number we didn't know. When Dad traced the call back it was the police! Apparently, they had arrested two men for stealing, and they had our camera (they had ditched everything else, since it wasn't of value to them). The police were able to trace the camera back to us because they looked through the pictures and found a picture of Ian in front of our hotel's sign and a "Shaffhausen" coat of arms we had found and taken a picture of while walking through London (awesome detective work, police dudes!). They'll be dropping the camera off with us when we get back into London on 30 July (that's how they write it 'round here).



This morning ran rather smoothly, except for the fact that we were only allowed to carry on 1 bag each, and we had a great deal more baggage than that! As I write this, we're on a flight from London to Rome. I'll check back with you all in Rome!