London - Day 6 - Saturday

Today we were up at a decent hour but not too early. C and I had breakfast at one of the little restaurants near the hotel while A & D were still getting ready. Even though many of the tourist attractions aren't open early it seems that the first hour they're open is the best time to go as folks don't seem to mind standing in line.

Since A had just seen the Tower of London a few months ago, she visited the Natural History Museum. I would love to see that place too but will have to save it for another trip. C, D and I went to the tube station, intending to hop on the green or yellow line which leads straight to the Tower. Unfortunately, both lines were closed for the weekend for maintenance! We ended up taking the blue line and connecting with the red line and even then we had a considerable walk.

Fortunately it wasn't an issue as we were able to walk right in, thanks to having bought our tickets on Thursday along with our hop-on/hop-off bus tickets. We skipped the Beefeaters tour, though it looked interesting, and went straight to the Crown Jewels, following the advice we'd read in a few books. It proved to be a very good move. We were able to walk right into the building where the jewels are kept. As you might imagine, you have to wander through several rooms before you get to the actual jewels. They have a couple of movies set up so that as you thread through the queue it'll keep you entertained. A lot of people had stopped to watch the films but we just kept on moving and were able to walk right up to the jewels. I really liked how they had a moving walkway set up next to the jewels so that people couldn't congregate around them. It kept the traffic moving and they allowed you to go back and get on the sidewalk again if you like so you could see the jewels from either side. When we exited the building, the line was already getting very long so we were pleased our plan had worked!

We spent a couple of hours at the Tower, wandering through buildings and walking along the walls. There was a great exhibit on the armor of Henry VIII. Always a large man, it was amazing he could walk at all in his last suit of armor. The guy was really heavy by then and that armor had to weigh a ton! Once again, it was really too bad we couldn't take photos. They had some really cool stuff in there.

We'd arranged for Buckingham Palace tour tickets at 2:30 so we decided we'd get in the vicinity, try to meet up with A and have some lunch. Again we had to take a roundabout way, largely the way we'd arrived, to Green Park. We walked around looking for anywhere that served food. We finally found a little place but it was so expensive that D and C only ordered a giant cookie - which turned out not to be very good. I ordered a chicken sandwich (lettuce & tomato were 1 GBP extra) and a lemonade. Total cost: about $18!

We met up with A outside the Buckingham Palace ticket window and went right in for the tour. It was very interesting and I hadn't realized the tour is only available in the summer when the queen is not in residence. We were fortunate that it was a fairly cool day as many of the rooms did not appear to be air conditioned. I can't imagine what some of the ball rooms are like when they're hosting large parties. Must get very stuffy! Still, it was most impressive and afterwards we enjoyed some snacks at the little cafe in the back garden.

We walked through St. James Park and found ourselves approaching Trafalgar Square again. Since we had about an hour before it closed, we decided to take a quick spin through the National Gallery (it's free!). There was a LOT to see there and we didn't even come close to doing it justice.

At this point D wanted to stop in and get a drink at the Sherlock Holmes Pub, since we were right around the corner. As she was off buying the drinks and her souvenir mug, we were approached by a man we later named Seamus. Turned out this was one stop on his stag party/pub crawl. He was a bit drunk but not obnoxious. His brother, Sean, came over to check that he wasn't bothering us and ended up bonding quite well with D, though we all enjoyed talking to him. Alas, all the boys had to leave for the next stop on their "tour" leaving us alone.

We went back to the Covent Garden area which seemed like a fun place to be and had dinner at a restaurant over a little corner pub. It was quite good and I had an excellent fish & chips. C left her Palace guidebook behind but when we stopped by the next morning, they'd saved it for her!

Back at the room rather early, actually. Only one more day to see everything else. We'll never make it!