Wrapping up in London

Sorry it’s taken so long for an update! We’ve spent the past few days traveling from place to place with limited access to wifi, so it’s been difficult to get a blog post up. To make up for it, I’ll post a few entries in a row. Let’s go back to where we left off.

Chiselhurst was quite fun, and definitely an unusual London thing to do. It was on the outskirts of the city and in an area that felt like true British suburbia, very green and quaint, where all the buildings are built of brick.

The caves were all man-made, and they spread out for a huge distance. It would be all too easy to get lost in there, and I was grateful for the guided tour. It was surprisingly cold down in the caves, and our only lights were oil hurricane lanterns, which added to the ambiance. Our tour guide was also great, telling us all about the history of the place, from chalk and flint mining by the Romans and Saxons, to being used as a massive bomb shelter during WWII, to a popular rock venue for concerts in the 50’s and 60’s, with performers such as David Bowie, Jimmy Hendrix, and Pink.

Nick in front of the map to the caves

Spooky

After Chiselhurst, we went straight to the West End to eat dinner at a fantastic burger joint and then see a performance of Midsummer’s Nights Dream put on by a company called Sh*t-Faced Shakespeare (sorry for the language, Grammy!). The idea behind the performance was that they take classically trained Shakespearean actors and every night one of them gets completely, totally, falling-down drunk. The resulting performance was rambling, lewd, and absolutely side-splittingly hilarious. Much humor was obviously rehearsed, but much of it was trying to keep the drunken actor on track as he slurred his way through his lines and went woefully off-book. Our drunkard was playing Lysander, but I would love to go back and see it again with a different actor under the influence. Wanting to get an early start the next morning, we went straight back to our flat after the play finished.

The whole audience was laughing from literally start to finish.

The next day we did indeed get an early start. So early, in fact, that we arrived at the Brick Lane Market a full hour before it was to open. But luckily all turned out for the best, as we found our way to an amazing breakfast joint and had our first Full English Breakfast of the trip. It all tasted amazing, but there was SO much meat. Definitely not something I could stomach every morning.

When the market opened, we wandered around there and the nearby Spitalfield Market for a few hours before heading over to the museum district. The afternoon was spent in 3 neighboring museums: the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum (the V&A).

In front of the Natural History Museum

First was the Natural History Museum, full of exhibits on dinosaurs, animal specimens, and the human body. Their marine life exhibit was especially good. Lindsay managed to give us a scare here when she showed up 30 minutes late to our meeting time because she had gotten the time wrong. Classic Lindsay.

Next was the V&A, my favorite museum in London. Not only is it chock full of massive collections of sculptures, art, and antiquities, but my favorite part is the Cast Room, a wing full of full size replicas of famous sculptures and architecture. Michelangelo’s David is there, as well as the reliefs that started the Renaissance, Trajan’s column, and so many more. It’s so humbling to see all of these great works of art in one area, and in some cases the originals have been destroyed, leaving these the only copies in the world.

Just a few of the specimens to be found

Michelangelo's David

Trajan's Column

Lastly, the Science Museum. Lots of technology, of course. Exhibits on space, agriculture, clocks, automobiles, you name it. The museum was massive, and we were running short on time so we had to go through it all pretty quickly, as we were on a time limit for a special surprise I had planned.

The “big surprise” I had planned for our last night was an escape room in the back of a pub in central London. An escape room is where you and a team of people are shut in a room and have to solve a series of puzzles and games to be released. The escape rooms are usually themed with a story of some sort. Our story was centered around the deceased Lady Chastity and her legendary ambrosia wine. Her very last bottle of wine was locked away behind four padlocks, and we had to solve a series of puzzles to unlock each one, including riddles, codes, secret rooms and compartments, and hidden messages, with the time limit of 1 hour. We ended up getting the wine with 15 minutes to spare, only 2 ½ minutes behind the current record!

Look at that fine vintage.

Everyone had a great time, made all the better by going into it completely blind. After drinking our hard-earned wine and basking in our success, we headed back to the AirBnB to get a few hours of sleep before heading out early in the morning for our flight to Ireland.

We're actually about to board our flight to Scotland now, so I won't be able to get the full Ireland post up until later, but I'll try to get it written down and posted later today, and at latest tomorrow morning! Off we go!