Part 2 - We visit the Queen

After spending a little time at Stonehenge, we finish our drive to London and turn in our car at Heathrow.  After spending days driving on the wrong side of the road, we discover that the left front tire has suffered some damage - can you say ka-ching ka-ching!  Oh well.  From there we catch the train to take us into Westminster where our hotel is - it's The Royal Horseguards Hotel right on Whitehall and it's a perfect location for exploring London.  We were very pleased.  We spent Tuesday and Wednesday (7th and 8th) nights there and almost two and 1/2 full days in London.  We bought tickets for the hop on, hop off bus which took us all around London to see the sights.  In no particular order, we also went to Covent Gardens, the Boroughs Market, Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace (for the changing of the guard - there's more to tell about this), the Tower of London (seeing the crown jewels), Churchill's War Room, The Florence Nightingale Museum, and the British Museum.  The British Museum and the War Room were very impressive and while we enjoyed seeing the crown jewels, the Tower of London was just too touristy.  Walking around and seeing London sights was thrilling.  Westminster Abbey was beautiful. 

We had gotten some advice about how to go about seeing the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace so we hurried over there to witness this event.  The queen's guards were there in their regalia but there were tons of people and we couldn't get that close.  We noticed that there was quite a bit of hubbub and we could see in the distance the ornate carriages we have seen on TV that carry the royalty so we were suddenly aware that something unusual was happening and sure enough, in the distance we saw the carriage carrying the queen go by.  I suddenly realized that it was opening day of Parliament and that there must be a ceremony or something that the queen was attending.  We hung around to watch the guard changes and it was extremely boring.  We decided to walk around a bit, getting out of the main crowd, heading over to St. James (where the "tired" guard is going to end up) and then back out to the mall where we could see the troops lined up but not much action going on.  We must have been hanging out for over an hour and were about ready to go.  The crowds had thinned and we were bored.  We saw horses coming toward the palace and decided to stick around to watch them go by.  Well, wouldn't you know it? Here comes the queen coming back home.  Quickly followed by various VIPs, including Prince Charles.  I tried to click photos as quick as I could and if you look closely you will see some familiar profiles in those photos.  So after all, we ended up with ring side seats to see the queen!

Assyrian artifacts at the British Museum

 Artifacts from The Parthenon:

 Don't remember:

At Trafalgar Square

Big Ben

St. Paul's Cathedral

Tower Bridge

Westminster Palace

Buckingham Palace

 The crowds have thinned, we were bored, and we've moved over to the mall area:

 At Churchill's War Room:

 Westminster Abbey:

10 Downing Street

The Royal Horseguards

The dragon is the symbol of London

Florence Nightingale

Remains of an old Roman wall inside Tower of London

Tower Bridge seen from inside Tower of London

Beefeater

 

The Burrough Market

A few people have asked about the food.  We made a concerted effort to eat traditional food, however we did not eat any tikka masala (the "official" dish of England) because, while we love Indian, we really wanted "English" food - or what we figured was English food.  The English approach to food seems to be to wrap things up in pie crust and serve the pie with some type of brown gravy.  And maybe mashed potatoes.  For better or worse.  I had a few pies that were not interesting at all, but a couple were quite good.  We had excellent fish and chips at a place called The Rock & Soul Plaice.  And we had something called a Bubble & Squeak Bap at the Burrough Market.  Bubble & squeak is a combination potatoes and cabbage dish and a bap is a roll.  It was eaten with a kind of vinegar-y brown sauce (similar to a worcestershire) that was actually quite good.  The food was mostly tasty.  And if I ever get to London again, I'm definitely eating at The Rock & Soul Plaice again.  That was memorable fish & chips. (Thanks Shelleys for that suggestion!)

And yes, we had great weather as you can see from the photos!

We left London Thursday night and flew to Shannon, Ireland.  I'll leave that for the next post.