The Royal Life
In less than 24 hours I shall be leaving on a plane to come back to real life. Oh swanky vacation I will miss you. We've all been missing our tour guide, Mama Lia, who kept us all in order. But now we have to do things by ourselves. Imagine that. We've been spoilt with not having to do anything with our luggage aside from drag it in or out from the hotel room door. What a wonderful perk. I did think that the trip was a little pricey but all the tipping and such for dealing with the bags is even included. And you know, now when I go home I'll have to carry my own bags around. Life is so hard!
But we did have an adventurous day in London. Our morning was spent with a city tour. Now of all the city tours we've done this was the best. Our local guide was funny and informative. But not droning on and on and on like some of them. Or at least not as much. We rode the bus around and toured St. Paul's cathedral, where Diana and Charles married. We even went down to the crypt but it wasn't the same as the ossuary that Paris has. But it was a nice tour. Afterwards in between our driving we visited Buckingham palace. With all the excitement coming up with the Jubilee you can't really see too much of the palace. And the road in front is being resurfaced so it was construction central. Our guide was hoping that we could see the changing of the guards and we were just about to give up when the construction stopped and out came the horses. So that was interesting to see.
Afterwards we found a delighful little restaurant and had a fabulous meal. Oh London, how I love your fish and chips. Our hop on/off bus included a river cruise so we went for a cruise down to the Tower of London and then we toured the Tower. The funny part is that there was an optional afternoon to the tower where we could have paid more money to have someone take us there which we chose to not do. And ran into our group again anyways. So we had a few goodbyes from people that we won't be seeing again.
It's been lonely traveling London without seeing any friendly faces from our group. After the tower we continued on with the bus and made it down to Harrods. That's an experience. Only we were hoping to get back on the bus and return to the hotel. So we didn't spend too much time in Harrods (I didn't need to anyways) and waited for the bus. It turns out that it was mostly done for the day so we got to have a real adventure with the tube. Once you get it all figured out it's really quite easy but all the information is spread out. I am really glad that I had looked over the map in the guide books before we left so it wasn't completely new to us. Also, it appears that there is some sort of sporting event tonight so the trains were packed. So we fought our way on and made it back with no issues. It was a good adventure.
Tomorrow we still have a little bit of time to wander so I think that I will be walking down to Trafalgar square. It doesn't seem that far and I'll be spending almost 9 hours jammed in cattle class on the plane so it'll be nice to stretch my legs before. Or maybe power walking and then I'll be all sweaty for my fellow passengers. Too bad for them! Then I'm hoping to be able to take the on/off bus back to the hotel. And then I think I'll ty to fit in my last street waffle of the trip. I can smell those delightful waffles blocks away. I'm happy and sad that we don't have them at home.
And it feels sad to just spend my Saturday night in London packing so I think I'm going to wait until it gets dark and take a river walk to see what London at night looks like.
Off I go to try to jam things back in the suitcase before my evening walk!
But we did have an adventurous day in London. Our morning was spent with a city tour. Now of all the city tours we've done this was the best. Our local guide was funny and informative. But not droning on and on and on like some of them. Or at least not as much. We rode the bus around and toured St. Paul's cathedral, where Diana and Charles married. We even went down to the crypt but it wasn't the same as the ossuary that Paris has. But it was a nice tour. Afterwards in between our driving we visited Buckingham palace. With all the excitement coming up with the Jubilee you can't really see too much of the palace. And the road in front is being resurfaced so it was construction central. Our guide was hoping that we could see the changing of the guards and we were just about to give up when the construction stopped and out came the horses. So that was interesting to see.
Afterwards we found a delighful little restaurant and had a fabulous meal. Oh London, how I love your fish and chips. Our hop on/off bus included a river cruise so we went for a cruise down to the Tower of London and then we toured the Tower. The funny part is that there was an optional afternoon to the tower where we could have paid more money to have someone take us there which we chose to not do. And ran into our group again anyways. So we had a few goodbyes from people that we won't be seeing again.
It's been lonely traveling London without seeing any friendly faces from our group. After the tower we continued on with the bus and made it down to Harrods. That's an experience. Only we were hoping to get back on the bus and return to the hotel. So we didn't spend too much time in Harrods (I didn't need to anyways) and waited for the bus. It turns out that it was mostly done for the day so we got to have a real adventure with the tube. Once you get it all figured out it's really quite easy but all the information is spread out. I am really glad that I had looked over the map in the guide books before we left so it wasn't completely new to us. Also, it appears that there is some sort of sporting event tonight so the trains were packed. So we fought our way on and made it back with no issues. It was a good adventure.
Tomorrow we still have a little bit of time to wander so I think that I will be walking down to Trafalgar square. It doesn't seem that far and I'll be spending almost 9 hours jammed in cattle class on the plane so it'll be nice to stretch my legs before. Or maybe power walking and then I'll be all sweaty for my fellow passengers. Too bad for them! Then I'm hoping to be able to take the on/off bus back to the hotel. And then I think I'll ty to fit in my last street waffle of the trip. I can smell those delightful waffles blocks away. I'm happy and sad that we don't have them at home.
And it feels sad to just spend my Saturday night in London packing so I think I'm going to wait until it gets dark and take a river walk to see what London at night looks like.
Off I go to try to jam things back in the suitcase before my evening walk!
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