PAUL

Our second day in London was all about great British institutions. Our first stop for the day was Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard. Amazing sight no. 1: the number of people who decided to join us to watch despite the horribly typical English weather and the fact that it was on every second day at that time of year. The pictures and videos will probably give you a better picture of it all than I could so I won't try to describe the whole thing, only to say that there was a lot of standing around and waiting for something to happen punctuated by brief sessions of activity every now and then.

We then made our way into the heart of the city passing St James's Park, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and Downing Street (although the street is fenced off and well guarded so the end of the street was as far as we got) among other things. We were then able to get out of the rain in the National Gallery and took a self guided audio tour, visiting the recommended highlights of many periods of art history and artists including Botticelli, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Monet and Van Gough. By the end we were quite the art experts (just ask us).

Ducking into the National Portrait Gallery next door, we soon decided there was little to keep us there after being overawed by the previous gallery, and continued on our way to the British Museum. This was our last stop and we took advantage of the late opening hours here to once again get full use of our day. The museum is full of artefacts from around the world including ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt, which the museum has "acquired" in one way or another over the years (no further questions). I'm sure you could spend two or three days in this place and still not see everything (our Aussie room mate told us he was going back for his third or fourth visit one day to continue his browsing) but we had to make do with around 4 hours and called it a night. Then it was back on the tube and home.

Having had two packed days in London already our last day there (Good Friday) was spent taking it easy with a walk through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. We were fortunate enough to have the sun shining even if the wind was howling. The second half of our day was spent at the British Natural History Museum. This place is amazing with a huge number of birds, insects and other animals on display, as well as some impressive geological displays. It's probably aimed more at kids now than in the past, and being one of the few things open in London on Good Friday, it was soon overflowing with families. So we decided to call it a day before we got trampled by rampaging 3 year olds.

And there ended our London adventures… for the time being.