Day 4: In Which We Bike In London And Don't Swear

The British TV show Top Gear determined that the fastest way to travel in London was via bicycle. However, the presenter who rode the bike during the race they used to determine this spent most of the episode nearly being squashed by double decker buses and swearing profusely. Once we got here, we figures out why. There's a lot of traffic, and especially a lot of those buses. However, we saw a lot of people on bikes, and since my mother is an avid cyclist, we decided to try it. Normally, this would require shelling out a kajillion dollars for a bike rental, but in London, this is not the case. The current mayor put in a citywide bike sharing program the locals call "Boris Bikes". For £2, you rent access to them for a day. This gives you unlimited rides of 30 minutes or less, with extra charges for longer trips. We set out to do this in Hyde Park, where we wouldn't get hit by a car. Unfortunately, there was a triathlon using much of the park's bike trails. We made it to the other side, but we incurred a £1 charge for having the bikes too long. Next, we biked towards Buckingham Palace, but not before I took a bit of an unplanned detour through the streets of London. This wasn't too bad, as I wasn't on a bus route, and the locals are courteous drivers if you signal. After that, we made it to the palace.

When we arrived, there was a huge crowd. It turns out we'd arrived just in time for the Changing of the Guard. We couldn't really see what happens inside the palace gates, but when the Queensguard all march out, they go down a street that is much less crowded. If you really want to see the famed red coats and black fuzzy hats, this street (called The Mall) is the place to do it. Unfortunately, the spectacle made us late again, so there's £2 more spent.

After that, we went to the British Museum of Natural History, because we thought they would have an excellent collection of fossils. Sadly, we were only partially right. They do have more specimens of large sea creatures, but their dinosaur collection is pretty small, and about 25% of it is just casts of stuff in New York's museum. Go there or to the Field Museum instead. Next up was the Victoria and Albert Museum. This is worth going to for the Rodin bronzes, a collection of jewelry that would make Lil Wayne feel broke, and extensive collections of Indian, Japanese, and Chinese art. My favorite piece was called Tippoo's Tiger. This is a painted wooden tiger pouncing on a man in red and blue. A crank comes out of the side, and when it is turned, the figure makes noises from an organ within. The museum claims the sounds are supposed to sound like the moans of a soldier being torn apart by the tiger, but I suspect they are actually the offensive playcalls used by kU. From there, it was on to see The Commitments, a musical about an Irish guy in the late 1980s who puts together a soul band in Dublin. While some of the slang can be a bit hard to follow occasionally, the musical is great fun, and everybody knows the soul standards it covers. Tomorrow marks our last full day in London.