This post was actually written on June 5, but when they pertain to a specific date, I’m backdataing them.

Sunday the 30th we took a long walk around London, starting with a ride on the Northern Line of the Underground into Embankment. From there we crossed over the Thames by foot and walked up to the London Eye. I quickly learned a few things:

• Copyright of Disney characters is pretty much ignored. We saw a number of Donald Ducks and at least one Mickey Mouse in costume in the path along the Thames entertaining. (We also later saw carousels and a number of other random objects with Disney characters airbrushed on them.) Let’s just say anyone who took their Donald Duck mask off in front of the public at Disney would be fired, but it wasn’t at all unusual on the streets of London.
• Dressing up as a silver statue and standing on a box on the sidewalk is an acceptable way to make a living, apparently.
• The London Eye is extremely busy on the first Sunday of half-term.

We walked up to the National Theatre in London, past the Blackfriars Bridge, and stopped at the Tate Modern art museum. I enjoyed the museum more than I expected to, not being a big fan of modern art. I still stand by my statement that the most beautiful thing I saw at the Tate was the view from the restaurant at the top, where the sun was shining on the Thames and making London look amazing.

From there we walked down to the Globe Theater and took a quick look inside, crossed the Thames back to the north side at Millennium Bridge (which is awesome by the way) and took a look at St. Paul’s Cathedral on our way up to Chinatown.

We got totally distracted by St. Brides Church, where the crypts were open for touring. There are few things I’ve experienced as awe-inspiring as standing in a crypt where I could reach out and touch (though I didn’t) the walls of a church that were dated to the 11th century.

From there we hiked it to Trafalgar Square, popped into the National Gallery for about 5 minutes, and finally made it into Chinatown.

We found a great little restaurant offering an 8-course meal for 9£ a piece, ate ourselves full of duck and chicken and shrimp, and laughed ourselves silly at some of the antics in the restaurant.

Behind us, a table kept asking about dessert. They kept asking for pudding. The waiter kept saying, “No pudding! Ice cream, coffee.” It took about a minute for everyone to agree on vanilla ice cream, but we’ve been chanting “No pudding! Ice cream, coffee!” ever since.

When we got our ice cream, by the way, it was as much chaos, because the waitress forgot about us, then seemed annoyed we’d asked for dessert, then didn’t know the term for vanilla ice cream, then finally delivered 3 bowls of ice cream, where each scoop was about the size of a ball of butter.

Thoroughly exhausted, we made our way back onto the tube, and home again.