January 5, 2014 (Sunday)

Two years ago, we took the kids ice staking over at Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park.  We had evening tickets, so were treated to skating under all the twinkly Christmas lights, but also to massive crowds.  The kids had such a grand time that one of the things they’ve been talking about for months is the opportunity to go ice skating again this Christmas.  It’s a popular activity here and we finally got around to purchasing some tickets.

This time, Adam did a little research and discovered there is an ice rink set up in the moat around the Tower of London.  That sounded even cooler than Hyde Park.  We decided to go right when they opened at 10:00 a.m. and that really worked out well.  In the morning it was light out so we could actually see the incredible setting, and — best of all — there were very few other skaters.  Also, the kids are all two years older now so Adam and I didn’t have to spend quite as much time hovering over them.  We got to skate around with each other, holding hands and being romantic (I know, gag, the kids already told us how gross “old people” love is) and I can’t remember the last time I saw Adam having so much fun.  He kept saying, “Just look where we are!  Can you believe we’re in the moat?”

Alas, there was quite a lot of falling down.  The skates they give you are (as the Brits would say) “rubbish.”  People were going down like sacks of potatoes all over the rink.  There was a guy wearing a red uniform and high-end hockey skates in charge of helping the fallen folks off the ice, and he was one busy dude.  His official title was Ice Marshall and he was really good at his job.  If someone took a spill, he was Johnny-on-the-spot to grab an elbow and yank them to safety.

I only fell once, but it was a doozy.  Josie couldn’t skate well enough to let go of the wall but wanted to see what the middle of the rink was like (the ice was much smoother there because fewer people were chewing it up with their skates) so I held her hand and told her to just stand still and let me do the pulling.  That worked beautifully until she started moving her own feet and lost her balance.  She pulled me down with her and in my attempt not to cut her up with my own skates (or land on her) I twisted sideways and landed at a painful angle on my hip and elbow.  I’m really lucky I didn’t get hurt.  Josie just slid across the ice gently, like a little bowling ball.  The Ice Marshall pulled her up nearly before she even knew she’d fallen and had her safely clinging to the wall again.

Holden wasn’t as fortunate.  He did a pretty severe face-plant early on and spent some time recovering in the green astroturf resting area.  He got a big bruise across the bridge of his nose but thankfully didn’t get a nose bleed.  Isabella did a bunch of falling, too, and banged up her knees pretty badly.  Adam didn’t fall, but I teased him that it’s only because he spent a bunch of time standing on the astroturf taking videos with his phone.

In the end, it was one of the most fun things we’ve done on this vacation.  In spite of the falling and bruising, we all left energized and excited and wishing we had just a little more time on the ice.  The only thing that would make it a better experience is having your own good-quality skates.

They don’t allow cameras on the ice but Adam was able to take a few shots before we started, and got a few little videos on his phone.

(Here is a short video of us skating that I’m only including because I don’t look fat in it.)

Ice rink in the moat around the Tower of London before they opened.

Not too many people … yay!

Breakfast at the Starbucks across from the Tower of London. We had bacon butties. They were not very good. (We ordered them because they are always eating bacon butties in the show “The Royle Family” and we were curious.)

After skating, we went on a walking tour through the oldest part of London.  It’s now mainly a financial district (Bank of England, etc. is over there) and, being Sunday morning, everything in sight was closed and nearly deserted.  We had the city to ourselves.

Walking along the Thames … Tower Bridge in background.

Some kind of modern art. It’s probably famous and important, but I don’t know anything about it.

Leadenhall Market – dates back to the 1300s

The Swiss Re Building (nicknamed “The Gherkin” but we call it the Bullet Building)

Tate Modern Museum was our last stop of the day.  They have some really incredible works by Picasso, Miro, Pollock, Dali, etc. if you like that sort of thing (which I do, so so much; the kids do not.)

Walkway into the Tate Modern Museum, St. Paul’s Cathedral in distance.

Bubble art in front of Tate Modern Museum.

“Hey kids, turn your heads and you can see a Picasso!”
“Nah. We’re good.”

Jackson Pollock, an artist Holden can finally appreciate.

January 6, 2013 (Monday)

We had planned to go Samuel Johnson’s house (guy who compiled the first English dictionary, before Webster) and the Grant Museum of Zoology today, but never made it out of the apartment.  The zoology museum doesn’t open until 1:00 p.m. so we weren’t in any hurry to get going in the morning.  Everyone was lounging around in their pajamas reading and playing games.  Someone would say, “Maybe we should think about getting dressed and going out?” and everyone else would say, “OK … but let me just finish this one chapter/game.”

Before we knew it, it was 2:00 p.m. already and Adam was the only one dressed.  At that point we decided to quit pretending we were going out and just embrace the day in.  Adam ended up walking over to Starbucks with Josie, because she was the only other person willing to put on pants.

A few days ago Adam downloaded the complete set of Sherlock Holmes stories so we’ve been reading those, in order of publication.  I’ve polished off three of them, and am wondering why I never bothered to read them before.  I love all the movies and shows, but just never got around to reading the original stories.

I highly recommend reading them.  They shed a lot of light on the TV shows (Elementary and Sherlock) as well as the Robert Downey Jr. films.  I didn’t know, for example, that Sherlock Holmes was a cocaine user in the original books.  (That explains the premise of “Elementary,” although in the original books Sherlock was a recreational user when he didn’t have a case to work and was not an addict.)

“…My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation…”

– Sherlock Holmes, ‘The Sign of Four’

 According to the museum we visited the other day, cocaine was a brand new drug in the 1890s and being touted as a cure for depression, as well as a “sportsman’s alternative to alcohol” because it didn’t impair one’s ability to stay on a horse or shoot straight.  London was full of well-educated cocaine users for awhile, until the down side of cocaine addiction started to reveal itself and it began to fall out of favor.  Sherlock uses both cocaine and morphine to stave off boredom and depression between cases.  (None of these drugs  — opium, cocaine, heroin, morphine, laudanum — were illegal at the time.)

Anyway, we had a very nice day of reading and relaxation, with a different type of education.  It was a nice change of pace.  We’ll get back out and hit the pavement again tomorrow all rested up.