Leaving London

Er... good morning... Is it morning already? It's 4 am!!! Ugh... why are we up so early?

Even the sun isn't up yet...

Oh... it's time to leave London. Wow... must be an early flight! Nope... but several stages of the journey...

First... we need a Tube trip but they open at 5 am (10 minutes yet)... I think we need a hot chocolate!

But the Starbucks only opens at 5:30 am. Phooie....

Oh... here comes a Tube train...

And there it goes...  it was a "Not in Service" train... we saw several of those go by.

Oh... there's ours!!! And we had a half hour Tube ride to....

 Blackfriars Station! This is a super cool railway station... it is on a bridge.

Isn't that cool?? There's the Shard (the tall thing on the right) and the Walkie Talkie (the moderately tall thing on the left). Do these buildings have "real" names? Huh... apparently the Shard is just that... go figure. You'd think by now it would be Pepsi's Shard or something. (Like the London Eye is Coca Cola's London Eye now... hmph!). Maybe it's cause the Shard is 95% owned by Qatar and they don't need corporate endorsements!

Oh... and there's St. Paul's Cathedral... with the sun just coming up.

Its very pretty at this train station.

 And over here... we have the Tate Modern... Beanie Mouse goes there ALL the time for art installations. It's an old power station (you can see the old chimney).

 Let's see... where's our train? Oohh... Brighton!!! Are we going to Brighton?? To visit Beanie again? Nope... we are just taking it cause it goes via Gatwick Airport. Sigh... Guess this great trip had to end sometime.

And there's our train...

 And... here we are... spit through security and Duty Free... and we met the Harrods Bear!

And some Paddington Bears as well... they must have cloned him...

Right then... we have 3 hours before our flight... this fox and bear are going to take some well-deserved naps... See you in a bit!