London - Day 3 - Wednesday

So after staying up VERY late last night - hey, D only turns 40 once! - we ended up with another late start. Fortunately C ran down to the grocery store and grabbed some bananas for all of us so we wouldn't faint with hunger. :)

One of the reasons we picked London for D's 40th is that she's a huge Sherlock Holmes fan. Since today was her birthday, it was also Sherlock Holmes day. So first stop, naturally, the Baker Street tube station and 221b, home of the Sherlock Holmes Museum. After D bought out the gift shop she led us on a Sherlock Holmes Walking Tour of the area. We stopped for lunch at Pret a Manger, one of those places that has refrigerators full of sandwiches and side items. Last time we visit one of those! We got the grand tour of the area and she got lots of photos of buildings mentioned in the various stories and was a happy camper.

By late afternoon we were all tired (amazing how quickly our feet got tired with so much walking!) and we tromped back to the room for a brief respite. We also wanted to get cleaned up a little bit for dinner which was reserved for us at (naturally) The Sherlock Holmes Restaurant, just above the Sherlock Holmes Pub! It's not a large place but the food was very good. There's one room glassed off with many items of interest to Holmes fans.

After dinner we decided to walk around and see what else was in the area. (It also served to help us walk off the dessert we all enjoyed!) It turned out that we were right near a number of interesting attractions. Trafalgar Square is popular even at twilight, with people just sitting out and enjoying the evening. Lots of people were climbing on the lions that "guard" Lord Nelson's Column. From the column's podium we could see Big Ben all lit up in the distance.

We walked down towards the river and were pleasantly surprised to find we were right at the Millennium Bridge. It gave us some great views of famous attractions along the riverfront: The London Eye, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament.

After staying up very late two nights in a row we realized we better turn in at a decent hour or we'll continue to lose nearly the whole morning. We took the tube back to Kensington and popped into the Stanhope Arms, our other local pub, for a nightcap.