Father's Day Fun Doings!

Well, the past few days my metaphorical cup of things to do has been overflowing. We went to Colchester, the Kew Gardens, the National Gallery, the Courtland Gallery, the British Museum, Trafalgar Square, the London Bridge Experience, Covent Garden, Oxford Street... For a more in depth view of what happened you can visit my father’s blog. So, I’ll try to find some highlights instead. Firstly, my sister arrived a few days ago, so the family is together in its entire zany, somewhat frightening glory.
Yes, I think we’re related.

On the way to pick up my sister my mom and I stopped at Kew Gardens. We stayed for about 13 minutes because we were late to pick her up. (We ended up getting to the airport five minutes before she walked out of customs. Our timing was impeccable!) During that glorious 15 minutes we saw lovely and interesting flora.

Here’s a pineapple. Two words describe my feeling about this: Hokey Pete! I mean, wow! That’s a sight and a half, eh?

Today we went to Windsor Castle. That was really cool. Here are two things that stood out especially:

1. We went to the room where the queen knights people during the tour of Windsor Castle. My brother and I took turns kneeling to “tie our shoes” (I had a harder time as I was wearing sandals) while the other hit the one tying shoes on the head with a coke bottle. We have thus been knighted, however messily, in the official knighting room!

2. We went to Evensong at St. George’s Cathedral. This blew St. Paul’s Evensong out of the water, to use some nautical wordage. The queen definitely knows how to run a church. The choir was great, the organist was amazing, and the whole service was flabbergastingly lovely.

By way, St. George is the patron saint of England. They even have a holiday in his honor. Why is he their patron saint, you may wonder. He’s pretty famous for slaying a dragon (yes, a dragon) and so, if you see dragons around England they’re probably in honor of St. George. He’s also mentioned in Shakespeare, and it seems like he was sainted because everyone thought he was so darn cool, chivalrous, and brave. (He did, after all, kill a dragon.)

Tomorrow is the last day for sight-seeing in London, so I have to get a good night’s sleep. I hope everyone had a good Father’s Day! (Especially the fathers!)