London Day 3

Today the group split up. Kristin, the boys, and my parents did a hop on, hop off bus tour and went to St. Paul’s cathedral.

We started out at Camden Market. We got some breakfast and walked around the shops and stalls, paying homage to Amy Winehouse and checking out the steps were the Clash took the cover photo of their first album.

We then headed toward Highgate Cemetery outside of central London. The cemetery was started around 1840 when it was getting too crowded to bury people in London. It is fascinating. Much of it is overgrown, which added to the coolness. We took a tour of the west part of the cemetery and saw the grave of George Michael and some other obscure Londoners (with cool monuments or stories). We got to go into the crypt which was in various states of disrepair. We could see the old coffins. Once the tour was over we walked over to the east side of the cemetery and saw the graves of Karl Marx, George Eliot, and Malcolm McClaren (the manager of the Sex Pistols).

After three hours in the cemetery we were hungry and grabbed lunch and had a picnic on Hampstead Heath, a peaceful green space that had great views overlooking London.

Our touristing ended with a double decker bus ride back to our hotel. I wanted to check out our area so I walked around for a little bit and got more familiar with it.

We connected with the rest of the crew and ate at Nando’s (really good chicken chain in the UK) for dinner.

Tomorrow: the British Museum.