Day 4 - Renoir, Leonardo Da Vinci and Bloody Mary

Today's mission: the National Gallery, Tower of London and Portobello Road. The first challenge was to plan our Tube trip around London's annual Pride festival and parade. The Times was predicting 1 million participants in the gay rights celebration and we learned through one of the many free London tabloids that it was to be held at Trafalgar Square--directly in front of the National Gallery. So we started out early to beat the throngs to the center.

The museum is amazing. This was the girls' first big art museum and one of the three most important in the world: the Uffizi, the Louvre and the National Gallery. Even as hoardes of purple-bedecked alternative lifestylers were gathering in Trafalgar Square, the museum was relatively uncrowded and cool. The interior of the place is a masterpiece in itself--with grand domes and columns and nearly total natural lighting from glass roofing.

We strolled through rooms full of impressionists: Monets, Manets, Pisaros and Degas. We recognized the "sunflower" and "chair" paintings by Van Gough. We studied Rembrandts, the Dutch masters, Velasquez and El Grecos. And we suffered many Madonna col Bambinos commissioned by the Catholic Church. We even took in a couple of Michaelangelos and an amazing Leonardo da Vinci sketch. We were impressed with how much the girls' enjoyed the place and ended up staying twice as long as we had intended. Very glad the girls are getting a chance to see and recognize this amazing stuff!

Next, thanks to the encouragement of Court's Dad and her English friend Louise, it was on to the Tower of London for a bit of English history and tales of bloody battles for control of the Monarchy. While pricey, we all feel it was a worthy tourist venture. As we've learned, the Tower of London isn't so much a tower at all. Rather it was the fortified former palace of English Kings for more than 500 years. And with all that history it was bound to have its share of intrique.

We joined a tour given by one of the entertaining "Beefeaters" or Tower guards, former decorated military officers who, if selected, get to live in the Tower area with their families until retirement. He was quite entertaining and informative and took a liking to Anna, trying to entice her to marry his grandson, also 10, so she could get married in the Tower Chapel (a Beefeater family privilege). Nothing doing, she said.

Post Tower, we headed back on the Tube to the famous flea market/antique row called Portobello Road. After about five minutes Garin took off, impatient with our vintage browsing. Court then went on a bit of a Mommy rant looking for high tea -- or any tea -- for her and the girls. After a rude woman told her one place was "closed," nearly hitting Anna in the process to pointedly point at the sign, Court "lost it" and went storming down the street with the girls having visions of Mom and the Vietnam cab driver episode again (see old blogs for that one). Several cups of tea and a scone and much needed chocolate later, Court chilled out and we continued down the road and, at Hallie's suggestion, picking up some picnic items on the way for dinner. Alas, Court and Hal forgot you were not supposed to squeeze the produce and the stall vendor scolded them publicly: "Don't handle the fruit!" It was good fruit.

We ended our London stay and spent the 4th of July in Kensington Gardens near Princess Diana's house, dining on fresh fruit, crusty bread, cheese and sea salt crisps (or chips as we call them in the USA). Delightful! But wait...Courtney had one more "box to check:" a double decker bus ride. So with Anna in tow, she hopped a bus to God knows where around 8:30 at night, road about five minutes on the upper deck, then hopped off and caught one back after being told "go out the back door" you silly Americans.

God Bless America...and England. We feel so blessed already to experience this trip with the kids and we're only 1/6 done! Tomorow we head to Edinburgh, Scotland where we'll celebrate our 18th anniversary and Hallie's 13th bday. Hopefully will have Internet there too but you never know. Cheerio!