(Later Monday13th)
We headed for Westminster today as I wanted to revisit some of the things we looked at lasty time we were here. We came up from the underground to the marvellous sight of Big Ben with its gold trimmings shining even though it was a dullish day. There is a lot of roadworks going on around London and particularly around Westminster. We wandered past the Houses of Parliament and admired the wonderful old buildings and made our way towards Westminster Abbey. There were people everywhere mainly tourists but I guess lots of Londoners also. The queues into the Abbey stretched for miles from 2 directions so we decided not to do a tour! We spent quite some time around the Abbey and the surrounding buildings – it is an amazing area to visit.

We then headed along George Street and walked into St James’s park, heading for Buckingham Palace. The park was full of people – lots of school children, tourists, people jogging and others sitting enjoying the day which was improving and warming up. There were lots of squirrels running around and people were feeding them – they are very tame and would go right up to people offering food.Ruby and Izzy you would have loved them!

As we neared the palace we could hear noise and realised that we had accidentally arrived in time for the changing of the guards. We ended up getting a really good spot to stand and watch the ceremony and in fact the soldiers and the band marched right past us. We decided to follow the band along the Mall, past Clarence House and along towards Admiralty Arch. Along the Mall there are two bronze statues commemorating the Queen Mother and King George VI. To the side of the statues there were two bronze frescoes depicting the lives of the King and Queen. We were most impressed with these.

We made our way towards Trafalgar Square where we had lunch then headed off along The Strand towards Covent Garden. There was a group of instrumentalists playing Ravel’s Bolero and we stood and watched for some time, soaking in the atmosphere. The little lanes around Covent Garden are lovely with lots of shopping and we visited quite a few shoe shops looking at the huge variety of shoes available. Eventually we reached Oxford Street and caught the tube back to Lancaster Gate and home.