Day 5 in London

Kate and I started today with a run through Hyde Park. What a beautiful park! Lots of trees, ponds, children's playgrounds. The Diana memorial playground is in Hyde Park. IT's just lovely in the early morning. Kate saved me many times from running into traffic. The British have thoughtfully written 'Look Right' at every cross walk but it is still not my instinct to do so.

Last night, 2 of Kate's 3 kids got sick.. fevers ..They were pretty sick this morning so their family laid low. The 4 of us headed out to the Museum of London. The museum is a complete history of the city beginning in 4000BC. The museum has its own archeological team who have dug up lots of amazing stuff.. early tools, swords, shields, helmets. We saw coins from the time of Emperor Hadrian and models of homes from his era. The Romans were in Britain and they created lots of infrastructure as they did across their vast empire. I remember seeing Roman ruins in Israel. Some of the wall around the museum is from the Roman times although much of it was re-built in the 13th century.

The kids were ok during this 2 hour museum visit. We tried to engage them and there were some cool hands-on exhibits. Kate says that museums are an acquired skill for kids. Our kids are doing ok -- no meltdowns although Sonia did scream NO at me in her most shrill scream while we were in the Roman section of the museum. We headed through the medieval times. The plague dominated that era. During the 14th century, 1/2 of London's population of 80,000 was killed by the plague. The population grew rapidly though because by the end of 16th century there were 500,000 people in London. Only 1/5 of them were killed during that century's plague -- which Ryan thought was small pox. Hmm.

Today, London has a population of 10,000,000 and the diversity of the population is stunning. After lunch, we headed home via the Tube (still a thrill although carrying SOnia's stroller up and down stairs is less than fun). Ryan went out for an hour to Portobello Market and then I did the same. The market is like a very busy and large farmer's market. There is so much amazing food. Even though it was close to dinner I could not resist a nutella and banana crepe. I tried to eat only half of it but was ultimately unsuccessful.

It's remarkable to me how infrequently I hear English spoken on the street. I hear lots of French, some Spanish and Italian, and then lots of languages I don't recognize. Kate says there are many Russians in her neighborhood.

Tonight, we are going out with Stephen and Kate to celebrate Stephen's birthday. This will be interesting as kate has hired one babysitter for 5 kids. The service she uses says the sitter can handle it. We'll see.

Jack and SOnia in one of the kids' areas at the museum:

These are some of my pics from the market:

These were some sights on my way to the market: