Day 3: Cramming in a week's worth of sightseeing

Okay this is really really long.

Sept 11, 2006

We woke up a bit late this morning. Mainly because Jason turned off the alarm clock thinking we would appreciate the extra sleep. Well, we didn't. As Melanie and I got ready, meaning packing and what not because we were going to find a different hotel, we sent Jason to go get some breakfast from a "nearby" grocery. We waited for almost an hour for him to get back. Man I was so bugged. We wasted a tons of sightseeing time. We didn't leave the hotel until around 11:00 am. We should have been at Buckingham Palace by then.

Well, we hopped onto the Metro, in silence, to Victoria Station. We got off and there was a nice little park where we stopped to eat the food that Jason bought. At this time, Melanie and I had decided that Jason could no longer be in charge of the alarm clock or getting us food. More time is wasted. We find our hotel after getting lost for a bit. It is called the Hotel Rama and it was a disaster. We got put into a basment room where there was only room for the beds, a dresser and a small little walk-way between the beds and the wall. The bathroom was even smaller than the last one. If I had been any bigger I would not have been able to squeeze through the shower door. Ridiculous. And it was more expensive.

So then we tried to figure out what to do next. We needed to purchase our Eurostar tickets to Paris sometime today and we would have to go to Waterloo Station for that. Well, since Buckingham Palace was just up the street we decided to do that first. It's on Buckinham Palace Road, fancy that!

We bought tickets for a tour of the State Rooms. These are only open to the public when the Queen is away which is only a two month period. So it was lucky that we happened to be there at the right time. The rooms were amazing and we had a little audio device that explained things as we walked around. I couldn't take photos unfortunately but I'm sure you can seen them online. Also, because this year is the Queen's 80th birthday they had an extra display of several of her gowns. So beautiful. My favorites were the ones she wore when she was young, in the '50s. After that we took a quick walk around the gardens but didn't have much time to take pictures because we had to hurry to Westminster Abbey before it closed.

We hopped on a bus, can I just say that the transit system in London is top notch. Everything was so easy. We headed to Westminster Abbey, snapped some quick shots of the outside and went in. It's mostly just a church with a whole bunch of memorials and tombs in it. But famous historical figure's tombs. We saw Elizabeth I buried near her sister Mary Tudor, Geoffrey Chaucer, Mary, Queen of Scots, Oliver Cromwell and lots of others.
We saw the old coronation chair and the grave of the unknown warrior. We left just as it was closing.



Then a few feet away was Big Ben and Parliament. We rested and took pictures in Parliament square where apparently people are not really supposed to go there as there is no way to get to it other than by jay-walking. Seriously I don't think I saw one crosswalk to it. Also, funny tidbit, since the cars drive on the other side of the road all the crosswalks tell you which way to look. It was really helpful because I constantly found myself looking in the wrong direction.

Next stop: Waterloo Station, the main train station in London. It was something to see. We bought our Eurostar tickets after quite a bit of trouble with Melanie and Jason's debit cards. They were frozen. Apparently it doesn't matter if you call ahead and say "Hey I'm gonna be in some foreign country from this day to this spending loads of money so don't freeze my card." Nope. Doesn't matter at all. Of course I never had a problem. We reserved our time to go to Paris and moved on.

We then took a bus to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. Actually we crossed over it. The bridge not the Tower, just in case you were wondering. We didn't feel like going in so it didn't matter that it was closed when we got there. The bridge is really cool looking lit up at night. The Tower of London was pretty interesting too. It's one of the oldest surviving buildings in London. It has a playground...that's gotta be new.

Being in London was really cool for me. I've always loved learning about royalty, where and how they live or lived. Though I didn't get to see as many palaces as I would have liked it still was fun.

After the Tower Bridge we we found a pizza place to eat at. Melanie and Jason were appalled that I ordered the American (pepperoni pizza). Sorry, but as far as food goes there is nothing in London that you couldn't find in America, except for maybe spotted dick, but I didn't see that anywhere.

Then the metro took us back to our crappy hotel where we relaxed by watching "White Oleander" and then it started raining for our last night in London. Oh and for Julie's and Alyson's benefit: the crosswalk signal man is green in Europe.