Hike to Humpback Rocks

Well, our first week home has flown by.  While there are many things we are missing about England, we have LOVED sleeping in our own beds, playing with Emma, and catching up with friends.  The weather has been beautiful ~ chilly in the morning, but sunny and quite warm by afternoon.  Friday, we decided to take advantage of this weather and our proximity to the Blue Ridge Parkway (which we can hop on about 20 minutes away from our house), and go on a hike to a place called Humpback Rocks.   We hiked about 35 minutes, pretty straight up to reach the peak where this series of rocks is located.  The view of the valley was spectacular!

We enjoyed a nice lunch at the top and then hiked the 25 minutes it took us to get down.  

As usual, I am not sure who enjoyed the hike more, us or Emma. :)

More Week 9 Highlights

Monday we made our second trip to the Science Museum.  We had already been to most of the museums we had planned on visiting and had left this week as something of a "repeat week" ~ these museums have so much to them that they warrant at least a second, and in some cases a third and fourth visit.  Little did we know that this week was "Half-term" for students around England.  We have been spoiled by having the museums pretty much to ourselves, but not this week.  They were packed with families and lines, lines, lines....or as they say here, queues queues, queues.

The Science Museum has an incredible hands-on section that, despite the crowds, was much enjoyed by the boys.

Tuesday was a "Date Day".  Jeff took Chris out for the day for a round of golf at a course in Wimbledon, a movie and dinner.  Ben and I took off for a special day of our own.  We started with an errand (which I won't name because it is related to the birthday of a certain someone turning 7 within the next week) and then went to the Tate Modern.  Now, admittedly, modern art is not really my thing, but I keep thinking it is due to a lack of exposure......after, now 2 visits, to the Tate Modern, I don't think that's it.   :)

The Tate Modern is in a large warehousey-looking building on the south bank of the Thames.  It is right across the Millennium Bridge from St. Paul's Cathedral.

This picture of the bridge and the Tate Modern was taken a couple of days later from one of the outdoor galleries of the dome on St. Paul's Cathedral, but that is another great story for another day.

 We did like these sculptures by an artist named Giocometti.

A Matisse called "Snail" that I liked. 

Glad to see a good old Monet thrown in.

And things would not be complete without including a Jackson Pollack.

After the museum, we took the tube to Picadilly Circus and had lunch at Ed's Easy Diner, an American, 50's style diner that the boys really like, mostly for the A&W Root Beer.

Next, Ben and I saw a matinee performance of The Phantom of the Opera - my second time seeing it, his first ~ we both loved it!  We ended our day with dinner at a Chinese restaurant we have adopted as one of our favorite London restaurants, called Good Earth.  Was a wonderful day!  Check back for posts on the rest of "Week 9 Highlights".

Week 9 Highlights ~ Day 1

I can't believe our time in England is winding down ~ only one more week!  I thought I would make one quick post with the highlights of this past week, but I seem to be incapable of a "quick post" so I guess I will start with Day 1 ~ Sunday.

The main event of the day was to visit the Charles Dickens House Museum ~ it is in a beautiful section of town called Bloomsbury.  It is the house C.D. lived in when he wrote many of his famous novels.  But first we made a stop at the boys' favorite playground (we have found this practice wise before going to any museum, but particularly the small ones!).  It has wonderful equipment and great climbing rocks off which they cannot help but jump.  I am guessing you would not find these on a playground in the U. S. ~ too much liability.  Amazingly, we made it through with no injuries.

Ben and Chris LOVE this Zip-line!

One of the great pleasures of the way we did this trip is that we have been able to take our time with things.  We have had many days where we went from one sight to another sight to another sight ~ and those have been great days, but we have had more days where we chose one sight to focus on and tried to have a "normal" day around it.  THIS was one of those days.  We had breakfast at a local pancake house, took a walk to this park on a beautiful sunny Fall day, then meandered to the tube station to go to the museum.

A quiet, tree-lined street in Bloomsbury

In this picture, Ben is standing in front of a famous painting called "Dicken's Dream" by an artist named R.W. Buss.  The images surrounding Dickens in the painting are the many colorful characters from Dickens novels.  It was a really interesting painting.  

Round blue plates such as this are seen on historical buildings around London, announcing who lived where.  Some have helped us find places we were looking for, but some have surprised us by showing us places we had just happened upon.  Like these in our neighborhood:

I PROMISE, the posts for the other days of Week 9 will not be this long!