Days 15 and 16

I started this post last Wednesday.. It's Saturday night, we just got home from travelling to York and Liverpool and the adults are going out on the town. More details to follow but here's last Tuesday. I'll update more tomorrow and add pictures. Tuesday we decided to have a mellow day. The kids seem to be struggling -- we have kept a pretty busy pace and I think sometimes it's just too much. In the morning, I took Jack and Kate's oldest to a nearby community pool. The kids area was a pretty large pool that was less than 3 feet deep. Jack loved it and practiced his "swim test" many times -- meaning he swam underwater for several feet. Pretty big leap for him. We stayed there for over and hour then met all the kids at the neighborhood park.

Ryan had gone to the Churchill War rooms in the morning. In the afternoon, I went out to the National Portrait Gallery. They display portraits of mostly British people from the last 500 years. One portrait that caught my attention was one of Queen Victoria handing a bible to a King from an African country. The anecdote behind the picture was that the King had asked Victoria to explain the reason behind the English Empire's success and in response, she handed him a bible. I thought that if that were true, the state of Mississippi would produce many more nobel laureates. The success of English civilization over the last 500 years is remarkable. The gallery is filled with scientists, artists, monarchs, politicians (did you know Margaret Thatcher was a research chemist then a tax lawyer before she was Prime Minister?), architects, explorers, and on and on all from this tiny little island.

After the museum I met Ryan, Stephen and Kate in the very vibrant Soho district. Kate remembered we were near a famous chocolate shop called Paul Young chocolates. She said their hot chocolate was amazing and they closed soon so we had to have dessert first. We had a long discussion with the man who worked behind the chocolate bar about their chocolates. I had a stilton cheese and port dark chocolate truffle then one with various citrus flavors that needed to be eaten last because of the way the flavors "popped." Then we had a thick, non-dairy hot chocolate that was the best I have ever had. It was unreal.