On Thursday we overslept a bit and woke to find the weather grey and spitting. But there wasn’t much of anything we could do about that, and though it was chilly, we both knew that it was quite warm compared to home.

This day we planned to do the Westminster area of London, along with the London Eye, just across the river from there. Accordingly, we headed off to Earl’s Court to purchase ourselves some Tube passes. As it turns out, overlseeping was a boon here, because to get an off-peak price for the pass, one had to wait until after rush hour was over anyway. So we were able to immediately set off. After arriving near Parliament and finding there to be a long line of people waiting for admittance, we decided to do the Eye first.

After hiking across the bridge, we bought our tickets and, due to the time of year and the grey day, were able to board almost immediately for our slow spin around. The weather meant that the view was not as good as it could have been, and did make it difficult to take pictures from our pod — the camera kept wanting to focus in on the raindrops on the outside of the glass — but the view was still spectacular. You could see up and down the river and get an almost helicopter view of much of London. Definitely a must see.

After landing we headed back toward the Parliament buildings, pursued by a strange waffle smell whose origin we couldn’t pinpoint. The line was still long, but there wasn’t much we could do about it, so we got into it. Eventually we got to go through the security checkpoint and were permitted inside. We went up to the gallery in the House of Commons and sat down to listen to the debate for a while.

Why aren’t our politicians this snarky and amusing?! If they were, we wouldn’t need the Daily Show, and everyone would watch C-SPAN instead of Comedy Central. The debate, which during the half hour or so we sat there, covered a variety of topics from daycare to a controversial intelligence bill, was extremely entertaining. I could have sat there for most of the rest of the day, just listening.

I jotted down (you weren’t technically supposed to take notes, and they did in fact relieve us of our bags and cameras before entering the gallery) after the fact a very short exchange:

MP: *talks about how the council in her area is dominated by the Conservative party, then later starts to talk about how daycare costs have been rising*
Speaker: This is what happens when Tories get in power.

Unfortunately, we had other things to hit that day, so after a half hour or so we left the House of Commons and cut across to the House of Lords. They were a bit more dull, though that probably had a good deal to do with the fact that the topic of the day was not important and thus hardly any of them were present.

After a few minutes listening to the Lords, we exited Parliament and headed across the street to Westminster Abbey. The small church there (not attached to the main Abbey) was being used for a funeral that day (while we were standing in line outside the Parliament buildings, we saw numerous well dressed mourners arriving and going inside) so we didn’t go in. We toured around in the Abbey itself for quite a while, looking at all of the tombs and memorial plaques. You’re not supposed to take pictures in there, though, of course, many people do anyway.

They had a stoncarver in there in the process of adding some names to the tile floor, so that whole area was fenced off. There was also a camera crew which I believe was filming some sort of travel documentory or tour thing.

After we got done with Westminster Abbey, it was time for lunch. Unfortunately, we chose to walk up Whitehall to look for some place to eat, and that was not very useful. Long on government buildings, short on food. But we went past Downing Street and the horse guards, so it wasn’t a completely wasted walk.

At the end we hit Trafalgar square, where the Olympic committee had set up a very large plastic tent (the IOC were touring London while we were there to evaluate it.) There we found a few places to eat, and in the interests of time and money, we selected a pizza buffet. (Not great, not horrid, on the level of a Pizza Hut.)

After lunch we hit the Waterstone’s in the square so I could take my first stab at finding the list of books I wanted and the list of books that J wanted. J had more luck than I at this store (a big zero for me.) Once done with browsing the bookstore, we got back in the Tube and headed back to the hotel to change: we had tickets for the Mousetrap that night.

We weren’t certain how long it would take us to find St. Martin’s theatre once we got to Leicester Square, so we gave ourselves plenty of time. Plenty, plenty of time. We ended up going up and down Charing Cross Rd for about an hour, hitting every used bookstore we came across. Still no luck on my list, though it was fun anyway.

The Mousetrap itself was quite good. The play has done a remarkable job of not dating itself, though I think it may be starting to get to the point where some of the isolation is a little unbelieveable. I also found myself confused by some of the characters’ ages (confusion which was not cleared up, I must say, by reading through the script of the play after I got home.) Timeline issues drive me nuts! I definitely would have felt like we had missed something had we not gone to see it, being the huge Agatha Christie fan that I am, so I am pleased.

After the play it was pretty late, so we headed back to Earl’s Court. It was not, however, so late that we wanted to go to sleep right away, so we stopped at one of the internet cafes and caught up with people. I also wanted to make sure that J was okay with the price of all the books I had managed to collect, and if I should stop going through the list.

We left the cafe when our time was up and stopped at a fast food-y kebab place and picked up a snack of curry and chicken and other goodies to take back with us to our hotel. Then we pigged out while we watched some mindless television.