Shopty shopping

Today, after a full English breakfast (have I mentioned today how wonderful our hostess is?), we wandered down to Ealing Broadway and did some shopping... went to a grocery store and a bookstore and a brand-new just-opened pound shop for various goodies not available (or dearly expensive) in America. Also we went by Marks & Sparks and got some foo-foo shower gel, etc.

We then trotted across the street to the local parish church and took some pictures.

This church was far more recent than anything Gretel had shown us...

...my best guess was that it dated from the 1800s (and I was right)...

...but it had its own beauty.

We were curious, so we went in to see what the church had to say to us.

We quickly discovered what it had to say:

"CHECK THIS OUT, I AM AMAZING."

Even St. George had to agree.

I -- I'm a little ashamed to admit what I did next...

Yes, I went to McDonald's. After I swore I would never EVER go to McD's in another country! Why, you may ask?

Here's why.

I mean, a Creme Egg McFlurry? How could you not?!

Oh well, my honey still loves me despite my poor taste in fast food.

We got on the Tube in hopes of returning to conquer the Natural History Museum. But the crowds were still awful, so we proceeded toward the Science Museum instead.

On our way we caught sight of Mr. Plastic Fantastic here.

The Science Museum turned out to be full of interesting things...

...from early Age of Steam engines...

...to the Apollo 10 space capsule.

This was a wonderful little motor-driven diorama showing a steam-powered room full of spinning machines. It was already great to look at with all the tiny pieces and fine attention to detail, but then someone pressed a button and the whole thing started moving. I loved it.

There was also an entire section on Dan Dare, British comic-book hero.

I'd never heard of this chiseled hero before. Apparently Dan Dare never crossed the pond to America.

We then went upstairs to play with the interactive items in the Launchpad area.

Science goes BOOM!

Launchpad turned out to be very similar to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, only with even more guided experiments.


We had fun playing around with dry ice and thermal cameras and hydrogen-powered rockets.

After a few hours of mucking about with SCIENCE!...

...we went across the street to the Hyde Park Chapel and caught the first session of General Conference.

From there we took the Tube to Kensington High Street and found a Wagamama.

Yes, we now have a minor obsession with Wagamama.

They don't have any in the U.S. as far as we can tell, and the food was delectable.

We picked up a Wagamama cookbook while we were there for later adventures in noodle cuisine at home.

Lychee and mango sorbet. Mmm.

It was getting late, so we Tubed it back to Ealing, where Captain Midnight ran down the street to pick up some more goodies before Tesco's closed for the day. He was successful.

Now back at the homestay with tired feet and a low-battery camera.