Again, putting me in charge of this trip made for some interesting days. We only had one full day here in London, so it was jam packed. Ready to get exhausted just reading about it? Here we go!
The changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace was due to happen at 11:30 am. so we set out to walk there (only about a ten minute walk for us). Kristin also contacted her friend John and he told us that he would meet us at Buckingham Palace. Well, we get there, and there are people everywhere! Where we were standing, we could barely see anything, but we did see some guards, and some marched in, some marched out, music was being played by people marching, I am assuming that is the changing. We could not actually see what was happening in the gates.
Anyways, John should have been a bit more specific, because saying we would meet at the Palace is much like saying you will meet somebody at Disneyland without giving them a specific location. We couldn't see him. So we set off to find a payphone, which there were tons of everywhere on the streets of London. Or so we thought.
We walked around for a good 15 minutes before seeing any payphones, and the first one we found was broken! So it took about another 5 minutes to find a working one. Which is all very ironic, because on the way to the Palace, I had just made a comment to Kristin about how many payphones there were everywhere, and then the moment we needed one, there were none in sight.
So, we called her friend, set up a specific place to meet, walked back to the Palace, finally found him, and set off for our London adventure.
We thought it would be awesome to catch a show right? But apparently there were no shows on a Sunday, save for Stomp and some other show which were already sold out. We went to this kind of shady guy at a booth which advertised for some cheap shows, but were unsuccessful. We even tried to get tickets to the MJ Thriller tribute, but it was sold out for two weeks! So we just headed off to some tourist areas.
It was only a few minutes on the tube to get to where we were going, but being the hip travelers we are, we decided to walk everywhere. we just headed toward the London Eye. We passed Westminster Abby, the Parliament building, and Big Ben. I really wanted to see the London Bridge, (or as I have been so corrected many times - the Tower Bridge - London Bridge is in Lake Havasu apparently). That ended up being even further, but we did walk there as well, and did walk across it. Along the way we stoped off at an awesome Greek place and had a late lunch.
After that fun, we heard Harrod's was a place to see for sure, so we set off for that shopping center. It was pretty cool, but way too expensive. But the store was really just this huge buillding with floor after floor of everything you could imagine.
For dinner, we found a great Indian restaurant. The food was AMAZING.
Then, we had to get to the London eye for our 9:00pm Champaigne flight. John planned to leave at that point, but he ended up staying and joining us on the giant ferris wheel that overlooked the city.
It was so cool! It was right as the sun was setting, we could see the city lights, and all the buildings, and it was beautiful. Also, since we payed extra for the champaigne flight, there were only like 9 people and a guide in our flight, plus we got champaigne! We took countless pictures, but I Included the good ones for ya.
After that day of walking for miles and miles, Kristin and I took the tube back to our hotel and passed out. We had to be on a train the next afternoon for PARIS!