Look kids, Parliament...Big Ben....Parliament...Big Ben....

Here he is - Big Ben himself. Big Ben is actually the bell inside the tower. The World War II Women's Memorial. It was in the middle of Parliament Street, so you can't stand right next to it. It is amazing to me that they have this, while we've only recently gotten ANY WWII Memorial at all! I enjoyed the symbolism of this one.

Emily outside of Westminster Abbey (no pictures allowed inside).

Emily outside the Noel Coward Theater where Avenue Q is playing.

The famous tube sign. We've really enjoyed using the Tube. We know that many say buses are better and that you can see the city, but we found the Tube very easy to manage. In the end we used the District, Circle, Piccadilly, Northern, Victoria, and Bakerloo lines. We were going to use the Jubliee line yesterday, but it was closed. I think that Bakerloo, Jubilee, and Piccadilly are my favorite names! It was also interesting to see all the different stations. You could definitely tell which ones were first and which are the newer additions. After going down 4 escalators to get to the Piccadilly Line, I could also imagine all the Londoners down there during the Blitz. All in all, and enjoyable experience.

We have now completed our last day in London. We are happy and sad at the same time. As we have said before, we are ready to go home and see our family, see our friends, drive our own car, sleep in our own bed, and use toilets that you only need to flush once. However, this has been an awesome trip and we have had a remarkable time and really gotten to see an AMAZING amount of what this country has to offer. We have been here for the entirety of the Wimbledon fortnight as well as the entire Euro 2008 tournament and the Royal Ascot. It has been really interesting to see how the English (and Scotish and Welsh) view the world and react to things. We have also enjoyed the BBC, but I know we'll be happy to have more than 5 channels again!

We will be flying on Virgin Atlantic flight 027 which leaves London Gatwick at 11:15 a.m. GMT (so about 6:15 EST). Please pray for safe transportation.

Now for today! We got up a little earlier today in order to head back to Leicester Square to the tkts booth to buy tickets to Avenue Q. If you haven't heard of it, it is kind of a mix of Sesame Street and RENT. More about that later. We had some really nice ladies from Utah and Nevada behind us in line. They were much more pleasant than our last line buddy. After securing our tickets for the 8 o'clock show, we headed toward Trafalgar Square. On the way, we went through the ground floor galleries of the National Portrait Gallery (the top floors were closed until 11). It was an unscheduled stop, but it was pretty cool. I enjoy portraits more than other types of art, in general. There were several portraits that were amazing - they looked like photographs from afar but were actually paintings. All the really major historical stuff was upstairs, though, so we missed all the Royalty.

After leaving the gallery, we headed out to see Trafalgar, but it was still rainy, so not much better than yesterday. We walked back down Whitehall and Parliament Street and got a better look at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament (we even got a small bit of video of Big Ben chiming the hour). We then went into our one last MAJOR site that we saved for last - Westminster Abbey. The church itself is nowhere near as big as St. Paul's, but it is the church of the Monarchy, so the number of important events that took place here is uncountable - as was the number of tourists inside. Thank goodness they had free audio guides to help us through. Again, I was awe-struck when looking at the tile floor where the Coronation Chair sits during a coronation - just thinking about the fact that EVERY SINGLE MONARCH since William the Conquerer sat right there to be crowned. To know that Mary, Elizabeth, all the Henrys, Victoria George III - they all sat right there! We also saw the tombs of Edward the Confessor (who was King before William the Conquerer), Edward I (Longshanks again - in a suitable plain, dark tomb), Henry III, Henry VII, Elizabeth, Mary, Mary Queen of Scots, Edward VI (Henry VIII's son), James I, William III & Mary II, Charles II, Geoffrey Chaucer, Samuel Johnson, Laurence Olivier, George Handel, Charles Dickens, Clement Atlee, Isaac Newton, and Charles Darwin - not to mention memorials to literally hundreds of others - and tombs for other people with more money than fame. In one sense it almost seemed like the White Witch's castle in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe because there were so many statues sitting around in random places. The Royalty ran out of room in 1760 and had to start burying people at Windsor Castle. The only person we couldn't find that we were looking for was Henry VIII - not sure where he ended up - maybe in the Crypts. It will be amazing to watch the next coronation (maybe the coronation after next) having now seen the inside of the building. Like I say, it is a lot smaller, so when they say "There are 5,000 people inside" I'll know how crowded they are. They said that at Queen Elizabeth's coronation, the choir and musicians had to have mirrors installed everywhere to see around the columns, screens (wooden not movie), and bleachers that had been set up. Definitely had some WOW factor!

Since Westminster was our last big site, we had some lunch and came back home to rest and pack before the show. The show itself was very interesting. It was written by twenty and thirty-somethings in New York thinking about what Sesame Street might look like for people their age. It was very irreverent and quite funny (extremely so in some places). It contained songs like "Everyone's a little bit racist," "There's a find line between love and wasting your time," and "The internet is made for porn". Overall we both enjoyed the show, but we agreed that their outlook was a bit pessimistic - "It sucks to be me" was the opening number. The point of the show was that your life has ups and downs and you have more than one purpose - and maybe you don't find it - but not matter how bad life may seem sometimes, "It's only for now" - the final number to the same tune as "It sucks to be me". We enjoyed Spamalot more, but it was definitely worth the experience, especially since it isn't the kind of show that will travel. It was also cool to see the inside of another Victorian theater - very ornate.

So now we are packed and ready to head home in the morning. Emily picked up Bill Bryson's "Notes from a Small Island" today to re-read it. We never bought it before (only got it from the library). She is enjoying it even more now that we have traveled here.

Make sure you check back tomorrow or Wednesday to see our last couple of posts. When we get back to America, we plan on having one post with our reflections (we'll each write our own part), and Emily has been working on a Top 10 (or 20) list of favorite place names and signs since we've been here - they definitely have a flare for names over here.

So until then- Cheers for now!
-Cary