My Dad Comes to Visit

In the first week of June, my dad came to visit me in England. It was only his second time leaving the United States, so I wanted to be sure we did a lot of touristy stuff. There were a couple days that we spent in Norwich, so I took him to the Norwich Cathedral and the Norwich Castle. I discussed both those locations in a separate blog post so I won't go into too much detail about them here. We also ate lunch at a Thai restaurant called the Giggling Squid. It's a very good place with a funny name.

For dinner, we went to the Rooftop Gardens, where there was a singer/guitarist doing a small concert. It was a very nice atmosphere, and afterward, we went and got gelato to finish the evening.

After a couple days in Norwich, we took the train to London. For me, this is the second time that I have been there, but this time for a period longer than one day. For big cities, I feel that I need to take them a little at a time. Too much at once can be overwhelming for me since I didn't grow up in a city environment.

When we got there, our first stop after acquiring food was to visit the Natural History Museum. This place is huge. None of the pictures I took could possibly get the immensity of the building. We looked at the insects and some of the dinosaurs but we didn't get the chance to even see most of what the museum had to offer. Plus we got hungry.

That night, my dad and I took the tube to central London to ride on the London Eye. This is another second for me, but this time it was later in the evening so there was no sunlight to blind us. We were hoping for a sunset, but it was cloudy that way, as is typical in England. Big Ben was still surrounded by scaffolding, but it's still pretty cool to see all the same.

Our next venture was to take the tube and go to Wimbledon. The tournament doesn't start for a few days, so we were able to get a background tour. Though we did see Andy Murray warming up on some practice courts which was interesting. When I saw him at the US Open a few years ago, the stadium was so big that he was about the size of an ant. But this time it was definitely him. We very creepily stared at him through a fence for a while before entering the club.

The grounds at Wimbledon are immaculate. Basically everything you'd expect from an English establishment. After the tennis tournament, the grass courts are ripped up and re-seeded. Then they are very gradually trimmed until they are the perfect length for playing tennis. Some of the courts didn't even have white lines painted on them yet. It was pretty cool being there since I've seen this place a lot of times on TV. My dad and I even got to sit in the press room and get our photo taken.

That night, we saw a show back in London at the Open Air Theatre. The theater is surrounded by a huge garden full of different colored roses.

The show was Peter Pan and it was amazing. We could see the extra actors using the rigging to make Peter and the other characters fly around. It seemed that everyone was an acrobat. I would definitely recommend catching a show at this theater if you're ever in that area.

Another thing we did was go into the Sherlock Holmes Museum. It's located on 221b Baker Street, and it has been designed to look as it would have from the descriptions in the books. Some of that coincides with the look from the BBC television show, but there are some differing details.

We also did some classic touristy stuff in London. We took the tube again and went to the Tower of London. Apparently, my family is distantly related to William the Conqueror, who built the tower among other things. It's very impressive. Not to be mistaken with Tower Bridge, which we also went inside. Tower Bridge has a glass walkway you can go across, as well as a lot of signs assuring you that the glass has enough strength to hold six elephants and a taxi cab.

This picture takes a look at the old coming together with the new.

To finish off our touristy day, we ate at the fancy restaurant that was right down the street from our hotel, and then we had dessert at Peggy Porschen, a little bakery that sells cakes and little confectionaries. It's safe to say that my dad and I both ate a lot of sugar while we were hanging out together. It was very nice to see him after all that time apart, and it was also fun to show him the parts of the cities that I have come to know over this past semester, as well as discovering new aspects. It's good to be home, but I do miss some of the adventures.