The GCW Tour, A Few Bits of the UK and Ireland: London, Part 1

Well, we made it. Actually, we made it a day and half ago (more on that later). Here's what we've been doing since my last post:

Flying on airplanes...

...and two obvious points of note: yes, I did shave my head, as it actually makes for much easier travel over a multi-week period; and yes, the seats do have legroom. If the GCW Tour has taught me anything, it's that coach is intolerable for international flights.

We checked into our hotel. Here's our room, which I must admit I'm thinking a lot less of now, given that a mouse ran across the floor while I was typing this...

And here's the view from our very tiny, and shared, balcony...

And just as an aside, it was interesting to note the competing theories between the three of us of what to do about the mouse. In the end, given that it's eleven-something at night and it ran under the furniture, we went with ignore it.

After we checked in, we went to the waterfront. Saw Big Ben...

Rode the Eye (and, yes, this is the same picture I took with the niece and the EYO four weeks ago)...

Saw this guy making a big mess (but really entertaining the small children in the area)...

And made it to the Millennium Bridge, which impressed the nephews since they saw it torn apart in one of the Harry Potter movies...

The next day we went to Westminster Abbey (since you can't tour it on Sundays), but I don't have any pictures of that since cameras aren't allowed. Following that we went to the Churchill War Rooms, which is one of my favorite museums. The story goes that when the war ended, they left everything as it was, exited, and locked the door. Forty-some years later someone decided it had historic value, so they unlocked it and turned it into a museum, and a pretty great one at that...

After that, we went to Buckingham Palace. We were three hours late for the changing of the guard and three weeks early for public tours, but the boys can say they were there...

Finally, we ended at the Tate Modern. I lost the Nephew the Younger (hereinafter, "NTY") at the first piece, didn't really strike him as art...

This piece, comprising car bumpers and "rope"...

...became a lot more interesting when we read that the rope was made from woven human hair..

This one was passed over until we read that it was created by the artist filling balloons with .paint, embedding them in plaster spread over the canvas, letting it all dry, and then shooting the canvas with a gun...

Personally, I liked the tower of radios, all playing different stations...

...and the circle that changed color depending on where you stood...

I also came up with my own potential contribution to the collection. I call this "Teenager, Unimpressed by Modern Art"...