This morning, we felt the lack of a coffee pot! We made a pot of tea, but it didn't really do the trick. We ate our cereal we bought at Tesco last night, and headed out to get a coffee at the tube station. Costa has really good coffee! It's still weird to us that there are different prices to eat there or take away.

First thing we went to Churchill's War Rooms, which was really really cool. We learned all about how they ran the war from underneath London. They were totally shut off and barricaded under there. Then we went through the Churchill museum, which had lots of cool interactive features. Gabe bought a toy tank.

After Churchill, we grabbed a sandwich and then headed to the Jewel Tower. We had a close encounter with some sort of protest with Arabic chanting and burquas. Nobody was that impressed with the Jewel Tower, and there were no jewels - just a history of parliament and difficult spiral stairs. The gal in the gift shop was nice though, and explained about the protests; that's where the police direct protestors, to keep it contained. So, that calmed the cubs down a bit.

Then we headed to Westminster Abbey, which was very peaceful and lovely, except for the tour group of elderly French people with a very noisy tour guide. You get an informative audio guide, and see lots of kings, queens, writers, and dignitaries.

After Westminster, we went to the National Gallery. We saw works by: Raphael, Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Titian, Van Eyck, Monet, Manet, Rivera, etc. Really lovely stuff. Victoria bought some art pencils.

When the Gallery closed, we took the tube down to King's Cross station and tried to get through Platform 9 3/4, but they don't let Muggles through - HEDGE. We sat down and all had pasties: Cheese and Onion (Victoria, loved it), Bacon and Cheese (Gabe - didn't find any bacon and hated it), Cornish Steak (Hedge - gross) and Chicken, Mushroom, and Rosemary (Sara - liked it until Gabe took it).

We got candy bars for the cubs and Hobgoblin Ale for the parents, and took them home. We're having the devil of a time with our shower, but we all got bathed. Now we're trying to figure out the washing machine; it does both washing and drying in one machine, but it is taking a really long time, so it might not actually be drying. No chance we can hang it out either, as it rains every day.

Tomorrow we're going to sort out our tour to Bath/Stonehenge/Windsor for Thursday and then see Buckingham Palace, the Tower, and London Bridge. Or at least that's the plan.