Stu had taken today off of work to show us around London. It was great to have a local for navigating the public transport. We took a double-decker bus and then the underground to Buckingham Palace. When Aicha (Stu's flatmate) heard that we were going to Buckingham Palace she decided to put off her work for the day and come along too as Stu and Aicha had never been to Buckingham Palace! Guess you are not often a tourist in your own city!

Thankfully Stu had pre-booked the tickets so we happily walked past the long queue and collected our tickets. After the obligatory security lecture and checks of us and our bags we headed into the palace. When inside we were given an audio guide which explained the history and use of each of the 19 state rooms that we visited. Buckingham Palace was nicer than we expected. Each of the rooms is very elegant and beautifully furnished. Each room is teeming with guards so we didn't dare try sneak any photos sorry ... you'll just have to take a tour yourselves :)

I must (a little reluctantly) admit that I was a tad excited to see 'THE dress.' They had an entire room dedicated to Kate Middleton's wedding dress including a video on the making of dress, her shoes, jewellery, the wedding cake and a replica of her bouquet. Her wedding dress had pieces of more than 6 different laces and included shamrocks (for Ireland), thistles (for Scotland), daffodils (for Wales) and roses (for England). After watching the video and seeing the dress I realised it wasn't nearly as simple as it looked on TV!!

A couple of hours after entering Buckingham Palace, we walked out of the gates and started an epic afternoon of sightseeing. Before lunch we managed to see St James' park and squirrels, Clarence House, the Horse Guards, Downing St (it's gated and guarded now so you can't go down it), Big Ben, Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey (but we didn't go in as they charged £16 each to go in).

Seeing the uniforms of the various royal guards I definitely think we need some over here - they are just too hilarious! I wonder how anyone can take them seriously in their ridiculous outfits!! They're not even allowed to walk properly either, with their most amusing overly-demonstrative synchronised marching and well rehearsed switching of which arm is holding their gun.

After lunch our heroic pace continued as we went to see the London Eye, Trafalgar Square (which had a big Olympic Countdown going), St Paul's Cathedral, Millennium Bridge, London Bridge (which is extremely unimpressive!), Tower of London and Tower Bridge. While walking to St Paul's Cathedral we accidently stumbled across the Zimbabwe Embassy building which was rather weird. Guess it was the closest we got to visiting Brett's home country! :)

By then we had completely tired Stu out (and perhaps we were a tad knackered too), so we enjoyed a drink and the chance to put our feet up at a nice pub in St Katherine's docks before catching a bus back home.

- Rebecca