Honeymoon in Europe - Day 4 (London)

Oh man, I had a hard time getting up on Day 4. Jay's plan to visit the underground Churchill War Museum was not exactly inspiring me to jump out of bed either. But we did go, and it was pretty neat, but I think this one held more interest for Jay than for me. Basically, it's the bunker that Churchill used to command WWII from, complete with bedrooms, a tiny kitchen, communication rooms, map rooms, strategy rooms, etc. It also had a museum attached to it which has everything you ever wanted to know about Churchill. It was pretty interesting for the 1st hour, but I think I gradually lost interest in the 2nd hour...

After that, we went to De Gustibus which was a fancy sandwich bar. Basically, you build your own sandwich and there are dozens of breads, meats, veggies, spreads, etc that you can choose. I was excited to build my own pesto chicken sandwich, but Jay took the easy route and chose an already-made fancy Italian salami sandwich. His was better, so I kept stealing bites. I got so full eating Jay's sandwich that he had to finish half of mine.

St Paul's Cathedral was a really beautiful church. Instead of ornate stained windows and rich gold everywhere, most of it is kind of low-key and elegantly ornate with its beige marble(?) palette inside and out. It's where Charles and Diana got married, for those of you who watched it on TV. There was also a giant dome that you could climb, with 3 different levels. The stairs got progressively steeper and more claustrophobic, and a poor girl in front of us got so scared she started hyperventilating and had to stop climbing. Her dad seemed disappointed that they wouldn't get to the top, where there were some amazing views.

The British Museum was next, and had some amazing stuff. There are three major sections: Egyptian, Greek and Assyrian. We saw the Rosetta Stone! And some mummies and a crazy dried-out corpse (it got dessicated by the desert sand for over a thousand years) that Jay called "human jerky". eeew...

We walked to Chinatown, where Jay couldn't pass up an opportunity to eat a cha siu bow (bbq pork bun)

The London Eye is basically a giant overpriced ferris wheel on the edge of the Thames. Someone told us that each time it makes 1 full revolution (which takes 30 minutes or so), it earns 10,000 pounds! I can't believe it - it cost us about 35 pounds to go on it (roughly $60 CDN). So while we knew it was a tourist trap, we still had to go and.... it was actually really worth it! It's a great view, and we had a fun time. We tried to time our visit so that we would see the sunset, and get some nighttime shots with the buildings all lit up. Success! And bonus - there's a 4D movie before you go on the Eye where you get to wear cool glasses and take goofy photos of yourselves. Score!

For dinner, we used a recommendation from the Eyewitness London book and went to an Indian restaurant called Chowki. It was Jay's favourite meal by far in London, and after that he read the Eyewitness restaurant recommendations religiously. Jay had a giant Kingfisher beer, the tandoori mixed grill (chicken, prawns, lamb - yum!) and dal. I had the Bombay aloo and chana masala with a glass of white wine - double yum! We also met some German tourists who tried to convince us to visit their little town one day because it has an amusement park called Fantasia-land.