On June 12th we got to see St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Changing of the Guard and our morning city tour.  St. Paul’s has the most amazing ceiling, but unfortuntely you are not allowed to take photos inside.  Christopher Wren was a very busy architect.  I think he designed 50 something buildings/churches in London.  I can’t recall the number, but it’s a lot.  I did pick up a postcard for myself of the ceiling.  It’s quite spectacular.  Harry saw the Thompson dude’s crypt that applied to have the Thompson tartan.  He was pretty excited with that.  From there we drove around on the coach to go see the Changing of the Guard.  I wasn’t too keen on seeing it ’cause I remember my grandparents telling me (and others) that it’s very crowded, but it was part of our tour.  Our tour guide was a nice older gentleman, who’s name I can’t remember.  John, maybe?  I liked where he brought us ’cause it wasn’t crowded.  He said he wasn’t going to have us run down to Buckingham Palace due to it being so crowded and at that point it’s just the guards standing around.  If you’ve seen any of the photos from that day, it looks warmer than what it was.  It was pretty chilly.  I wish I had brought my jacket, but I at least had the Clapotis with me.  It was interesting seeing the procession of the band and then the guards.  There’s a little war going on so a lot of the usual British soliders were not there.  We saw a unit from some other country.  Dang I can’t remember where!  I knew I should have continued this earlier, while everything was still fresh in my head.  All the typing bothered my hand for a few days the last time.  Anyway….

Later on after having lunch in a pub we went to the British Museum, Harrods and to Paddington Station.  All the museums in London are free!  I think that is really cool.  I believe that was something that Prince Albert instated.  We saw a crystal skull (like from the last Indiana Jones movie), lots of Roman and Greek statues, parts of the Parthanon, The Rosetta Stone (which I had no idea it was there), and the Sutton Hoo collection that Harry really wanted to see (it’s Viking stuff).  The Bog Man was MIA.  We saw a head from a Roman statue that looked an awful lot like Ross (but not as much as the one from the Boston Museum of Art).  We spent just enough time there for me.  As much as I like art, I don’t like museums too much.  I get what I refer to as “museum head” and can’t get out of that funk all day.  Harry could spend hours, if not days in them.  After there we went to Harrods where Harry got himself a new Paddington Bear.  I didn’t see one I liked.  He got the last one with the blue coat.  Then it was off to find Paddington Station and the Paddington statue.  I took Harry’s picture of him with the statue and his new bear.  It’s very cute.

The 13th was our last full day in London and our favourite overall.  We had a more relaxed day.  We walked around Kensington Gardens for quite some time.  It was very nice and peaceful.  My favourite thing there is the Italian fountains.  If you ever get a chance to go, I highly recommend checking them out.  I think we were over there for at least an hour just taking pictures.  Even though we were off doing our own thing, it was romantic.  We’d each take a ton of photos, find each other and then show each other what we took.  We saw Kensington Palace from a distance.  We also saw the Albert Memorial.  It’s ginormous and guilded in gold!  We also saw the Peter Pan statue. 

Then that late afternoon we went to the Tower of London.  Wow.  It’s huge.  It’s quite the tourist trap, but highly recommend seeing it.  The history of it is quite something.  Bloody.  It’s pretty amazing to walk around where King Henry VIII lived…and had several of his wives beheaded, but nonetheless.  We saw the crown jewels.  Kinda insane.  I kept saying “Wow”.  My favourite was Queen Victoria’s tiny crown which is made up entirely of diamonds.  It’s very small and sweet…and sparkly!  No picture taking is allowed in the vault.  Which I can understand. 

Harry wanted to check out the armour in the White Tower so he did that.  I was going to go up with him, but the stairs on the outside scared me (the kind with the opening between each step and it was kinda steep).  So while he did that I walked around.  I took photos of some of the buildings, Beefeaters (I love their uniforms), the ravens and the location of where the scaffolding for the beheadings took place.  That was very sad.  There’s a new glass sculpture of a pillow with all the names of the people surrounding it.  I wanted to go up in the Bloody Tower, but 1) I wasn’t sure how long Harry was going to be and 2) I didn’t know how small/whindy/steep the stairs or actual inside was. 

For dessert that night I had a waffle covered in chocolate sauce.  Holy smokes was that freakin’ delicious! 

The next day was our traveling day.  We got to ride the Eurostar train.  Our seats were backwards!  Thankfully, I didn’t feel sick.  I did take a motion sick pill, so that probably helped.  I did feel the air pressure change frequently.  That was uncomfortable.