Day 2

We had a good but tiring day today. We started with a hearty Starbuck breakfast since it’s right across the street. Jill did enjoy a nice cup of coffee as we got the morning started. The nice advantage was that Starbucks also has free wifi, which is now a necessity. After breakfast we boarded a sightseeing bus that takes you to all of the sites. They provide live commentary on some of the buses and you can get off the bus and then later get back on a different one. We drove by Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, Baker Street, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey and Big Ben before we finally decided to walk a little bit. As part of the package, we were able to take a boat down the River Thames. The views from the river were very spectacular, especially the ones of the Tower Bridge and Parliament. There were only a few people when we started but the crowds grew throughout the day. The boat ride down and back took about an hour. 

After the ride on the boat, we got out and walked around the Parliament building and Westminster Abbey a little bit. It just boggles the mind to think of how many of these buildings were built hundreds of years ago. We did learn that the city of London is only 1 square mile and maintains its independence from the neighboring cities. The city of Westminster houses most of the big areas like Buckingham Palace but the city of London is where the oldest buildings are.  A fire in 1666 wiped out 4/5ths of the city in 4 days. The first place that burned down was memorialized by a structure created by Christopher Wren who built St. Paul’s Cathedral. We did walk into St Paul’s but they were having Sunday services so we only got a quick glimpse of the church. It is one amazing place. You can’t take pictures there but it was spectacular.

After having lunch (at the Earl of Sandwich no less!) and walking around St Paul’s Cathedral, we got back on the bus and continued on the journey through the rest of the sites.  It’s just amazing that there are so many old buildings. We decided to come back to the hotel, rest for a little bit and then head out to dinner. For dinner, we just walked down to Piccadilly Circus and looked for someplace that we could all agree on. We found a nice Italian restaurant that looked good. We all had a good meal and it was nice to sit down for a while and enjoy it. We met a nice waitress from Romania that had recently lived in Chicago. We ended up giving her a pen that I made, took six to give away when we wanted, and she even gave us her phone number and email address.  One thing that amazes me is the number of people from different countries. There are so many languages that you hear as you walk down the street.

Jarret is enthralled with the number of nice cars that we’ve seen. There were 10 Mercedes, he counted, parked on the street of our hotel. In the same mix was a Ferrari and we saw a convertible Rolls Royce driving down the road. As for the rest of the drivers, I’m surprised I haven’t seen a tourist run over by a car. The cars are going every which way and people just cross the street at random. I think there is a method to keep from getting run over but I still haven’t figured it out for sure. For now I’m trying to rely on waiting for the walk sign. However, at one small park with a Winston Churchill statue in it by Westminser Abbey, it turns out that all the crosswalks were out of order, we just had to brave the traffic on that one. It would be one thing if all the streets were straight and traffic was coming from only two directions but there are some crosswalks where I don’t even see where the cars are coming from.

One thing that happened yesterday that I forgot about was that I was dive bombed by a pigeon. We were walking down a busy street and all of a sudden a pigeon flies right by my head, so close that I actually felt his feathers on my forehead. I duck and everyone else laughs…

Today the weather was great, it’s a little humid but the sun was out the whole day and it was just about perfect. It looks like we’ll be lucky and the weather will hold up through the rest of this week.

Tomorrow we’re headed to the Tower of London and the British Museum. I’m still dealing with internet issues….too cheap to pay 16 pounds for internet for a day….so I’ll have to post some pictures later.