Second Day in London

The internet at our hostel in London really sucked and wouldn't let us upload any of our blogs! So we're playing catch-up. Enjoy reading the next few posts about London and our first day in Edinburgh!

Today was an extremely busy day! We left our hostel at 8:40am and didn’t return until 9pm. Because we did the bus tour yesterday, we got to do a free walking tour to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guards. It was probably one of the strangest things I’ve ever experienced. You watch grown men in funny outfits with furry hats marching down the streets with hoards of people just frantically running all around. See the video of it below. It doesn’t look like we’re moving fast in the video, but everyone is seriously jogging as quickly as they can.



After the changing of the guards, we ditched our tour and had a picnic in St. James Park in front of Buckingham Palace. Then we made our way to a river cruise that was also free with the same bus pass from the day before. The boat cruise was a lot of fun. We bought some coffee on the boat and cruised down the Thames while listening to our hilarious tour guide. Apparently “Big Ben” is the name of the bell inside the clock tower and was named after a man named “Benjamin”. And as the tour guide pointed out, “Good thing he wasn’t named Richard…” We also got extremely lucky because we were right by the Tower Bridge when an alarm sounded and the bridge started to lift for a boat. This is a rare site to see and we were actually on the river when it happened!

We got off the cruise in Westminster and headed towards Westminster Abbey. We didn’t really know what to expect, but it was absolutely breathtaking. Westminster Abbey is extremely elaborate, with graves everywhere. We started to feel a bit uncomfortable because no matter what we did, we were always standing on top of a grave!! It was amazing to see the graves and tombs of very important people throughout England‘s history. I was particularly excited to see the grave of Charles Dickens and Brittany was absolutely tickled to see the Gothic architecture which she had recently studied.

We hopped on the tube and headed towards the National Gallery. We only had less then an hour to explore this massive museum before they closed. So we are probably going to go back tomorrow because we didn’t even begin to see everything we wanted. After the National Gallery closed, we walked around the corner to the Sherlock Holmes Restaurant where we had fish and chips. Of course I couldn’t go a day without publicly embarrassing myself. As our fish and chips arrived at the table, I shook the ketchup to mix it up as everyone does. I open the lid and a very loud squirting noise erupts and ketchup sprays all over me! Hopefully not too many people noticed….

We sat next to two friendly locals who recommended that we go to Leicester Square for dessert. On our way there, we stopped at a bookstore and picked up British versions of Harry Potter. Brittany chose “Prisoner of Azkaban” and I bought “Half Blood Prince”. We then went to “Boots”, a Longs-type store, and I bought a box of bandaids because my feet were killing me. I have a billion blisters all over my feet and used half the box!!! The picture below is a very sad-looking me holding the trash from all the bandaids I had to use on my feet.

Leicester Square was a happening place full of restaurants, bars, cinema, theater, and ice cream parlors. We finally headed back to our hostel after a long day. Of course, no day is complete without picking up a free paper and reading it on the tube on your way home, which Brittany and I quickly picked up on!
Cheers!