london calling

Tuesday morning in London was GORGEOUS albeit somewhat chilly. Breakfast at the hotel was also bombin' and very British. They had a list of stuff you could get plus cereal and fruit cocktail. I had scrambled eggs and toast, but Mom and Katie got beans and tomatoes too. The eggs were outstanding, and I think I ended up eating 4 pieces of toast. Haha. After breakfast we walked to Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens and just enjoyed the beautiful morning. We saw the Peter Pan statue and the Princess Diana memorial fountains which weren't actually fountains, but more a a circle waterfallly thing. It was supposed to represent her life and you could walk around it and into the center, the heart of the memorial. Next it was off to Harrod's! That place is massive and so fancy! I didn't ever think of it being so upscale. There were like 6 floors and we took the Egyptian escalator up most of the way. So cool. We mostly just wandered through a little bit of the fancy rooms and then hit up the food area. Even that was fancy. They had all sorts of stuff from baklava to cheeses to Turkish delight to the classic shortbread. Being around all that food got us hungry, so we took the tube to this delicious veggie place, Coco Momo's, for lunch. What? Did I really use delicious and veggie in the same sentence?! Yes. I mean being in the UK has made me like veggies more because the meat in the dining hall is normally weird and the veggie options are just slightly better. So at Coco Momo's I got their lunch deal and had this carrot soup and a chicken mozzarella wrap. Following that tasty meal, we went to the Tower of London. I always thought it was only one tower, but it's a whole fortress! It was pretty cool. We had a free tour with a beefeater guide [that's what they call the guards; I don't remember why]. Our guide was really sarcastic and fun, and told us a lot of good stuff. We got to go into the chapel and later after the tour, we waited in a long line to go see the crown jewels. I saw the Scottish crown jewels when I visited Edinburgh Castle, but the crown jewel exhibit in the tower of London was way more intense. There was also a lot more besides just the crown jewels. It was funny, to see the jewels, they had one of those moving walkways like you see in airports! I guess that's a pretty ingenious way to keep the crowd moving. After seeing the jewels and such, we attempted to climb up one of the towers [there are like 5? I don't really know. haha], which got us stuck in another little museum with weaponry and we couldn't even get up near the windows to look out. Bummer. By the time we got out of there, we rushed off to make it to Evensong at St. Paul's Cathedral! Now that place is MAGNIFICENT. I was looking at the ceiling and around the whole service. It was short and this time we could see the choir which I liked. The cathedral was so beautiful. Too bad I'm not royalty; I'd love to get married there. Although, I've got plans to marry Prince Harry, so I guess we'll probably get married in there. Win. Princess status. Haha. From St. Paul's we walked across Millennium Bridge [destroyed by Death Eaters in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince movie!] and saw Shakespeare's Globe Theater. It's actually not the original one, so it wasn't nearly as cool as I hoped. We didn't go inside so maybe it was cooler inside? Whatevs. Then we walked down and across London Bridge and got closer to Tower Bridge to get pictures we forgot to do when we were 10x closer earlier in the afternoon. Then it was dinner time! We went to The Banker, this off the beaten path pub restaurant where we hoped to get fish and chips. Sadly, they only served that during lunch, but we got this awesome autumn plate that had all sorts of cheeses, little wraps, bread, grilled peppers. So good! After that we went back to Big Ben and such to too them all lit up at night. Mmm. There's something about the city at night that I really enjoy. 

beautiful day in Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens

Harrod's Bear.

Tower of London

St. Paul's

London Bridge!

the city by night