More Recap - London Travels

Hello. Again a quick recap - this was a Girl Scout trip to England and we spent the first couple of days touring around London on our own.

Here's what I posted from that day, Thursday, August 12:

Well it is the end of Thursday here. It's 11:15pm and I'm just getting a minute to post.
Today we toured the Queen's Gallery, Victoria and Albert, Art and Love. It was all of the art that they had commissioned and collected. After that we toured the Royal Mews which is the horses and carriages that the royals have and use. We saw the carriage that Princess Diana rode in before her wedding. Then we toured Buckingham Palace.

After tea and scones at Buckingham Palace we went to Harrod's for a very quick shopping trip. We finished the day with a late dinner at the original Hardrock Cafe.

There is just so much to see here that there's no way we can get it all in. We planned to see the Tower of London for 2 days now, but we keep running out of time. We plan to do that first thing tomorrow.

Time for bed. I hope everyone is well!
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Here's Teresa, Mary Helen, Tiffany, Bailey and Elizabeth at the entrance to the Queen's Gallery.




After the tour, we had a nice lunch. I had chicken with black beans.

And we finished lunch up with fried ice cream - it was very good.

Then it was on to the Royal Mews tour. We saw all of the carriages that the Queen uses.

This was the carriage that Diana rode in to marry Prince Charles.

Then the girls got a hold of the camera.

They were having fun.


You can see me and Melissa walking away in the background. We had given up on getting the camera back.

They found out that they could amuse themselves with their own reflection.

After the Royal Mews tour, we toured Buckingham Palace. Sorry - no pictures allowed in there.

But after the tour, we had a creamed tea, which is scones with clotted cream and jelly and tea. Yummy!

This is looking back at Buckingham Palace. We had the tea under the tents you see on the left. Those are geese in the garden as well.

We were allowed to walk around the garden of Buckingham Palace, which was quite pretty. Keep in mind this is in the middle of London, yet it was so quiet and peaceful.

After Buckingham Palace, it was time for some shopping! Harrods here we come!

We were pressed for time, so we only had about 45 minutes here. We went up and down the escalators, and I had just enough time to buy (what else) 2 cupcakes. They made the perfect bedtime snack for everyone.

Last stop on this day was the original Hard Rock Cafe in London. We had a great dinner.

I took this picture in the Underground. It just cracked me up because instead of "exit" signs, we would see "way out" signs.

That's all for now. More later.

Cheers!

Recap of London Travels - Aug 11

I will apologize for the huge post right off the bat. This day (Wednesday, August 11) was just so packed it was hard not to include everything. And for anyone just joining the blog - this was a Girl Scout trip to London.

Here's the first post I did about this day:

Today we are off to Buckingham palace. The weather is beautiful and the sun is out. We will take part of the changing of the guards and then off to London tower.
My power adapters don't work, so I couldn't charge my phone last night. This might be the last post unless I can find another charger.

We took part of the flag ceremony this morning at Pax Lodge which was quite nice.

Gotta run. We are having a wonderful time!
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And here's some pictures - the flag ceremony at Pax Lodge. All of the girls who are staying at Pax Lodge came out.


This is all of our group in front of the Pax Lodge sign. We are all dressed up because we are headed to Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard ceremony.


A bunch of the girls staying at Pax Lodge were going to the ceremony as well, so we followed them to Buckingham Palace.

Here we are walking to the Underground station.


And here's the herd of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides (as they are known in England) walking in London.

This picture was taken after the changing of the guard ceremony. I was looking through the gates that surround Buckingham Palace. Where those guards are now is where we stood during the ceremony - but we were not allowed to take any pictures during that time.

This was taken after the ceremony - just to give you an idea of how many people were there to see the changing of the guards.

And here's the girls immediately after the changing of the guards. They were changing their shoes. We were not allowed to wear tennis shoes, or trainers as they are called there.

We stopped for lunch at a restaurant afterwards.

Here's the adults.

I had the fish and chips. This turned out to be probably the worst meal we ate during the whole trip. The chips were cold and the dry lettuce was just plopped on top of them.

Here's what I posted right after this meal:

Wow. What a day so far and we are still going. We went to see the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. We got to go inside the gates and there were thousands outside. The guards even came over and talked to us.
We are now on our way to the Tower of London - I think.

Oh, and we ate some fish and chips. Not bad!

More later.
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After lunch, we hopped back on the Bus tour because our tickets were good for 24 hours.

Here's a horse head sculpture - not sure why.

I think this was the shopping area - this was taken from the bus. But I thought this picture was interesting to show how many people were out and about.

This is Trafalgar Square - again the picture was taken from the bus.

Before we went to the Tower of London, the girls got their picture taken with Jack Sparrow.

And this other guy - a lizard type thing. These were street performers and for some change you could get your picture taken with them.

After this we hopped onto a boat to take us down to the Tower of London. Here's a view of the London Eye from the river.

And a picture of the girls on a bridge.

We made it to the Tower of London and we took our picture in front of it. However, we realized that we didn't have enough time to do a tour so we moved on to something else.

We got back on the boat and went back to the London Eye.

Here's the underside of London Bridge.

Here's Mary Helen, Melissa and Teresa on the boat.

Here's the London Eye from the boat. Scary high!

Here's the girls (in the very bottom middle) walking to the London Eye.

We all got on, despite at least two of us (Teresa and me) not liking heights.

We are waving at the car behind us.

The views from up there.

It was worth the trip!

So, this was one of the neatest things we saw while in London. It was a Dyson hand dryer! You stuck your hands into the dryer and it blew tons of air on you and your hands dried quickly. After seeing this we often looked for restrooms with this dryer in it. It's the little things that mattered to us.

And here the girls are in the subway after a long day.

Here's my last post from that day:

Wow are we tired. It's 12:15 am here and we are about to go to bed.
Today after Buckingham Palace we had lunch and then went to tour the Tower of London, but we ran out of time so we will do that tomorrow. Instead we went on the London Eye. That was amazing. I normally don't like heights but I'm so glad I did it.

After a quick dinner, we went to the London Tower to see the locking of the gates. This is a very old ceremony that we had special tickets for.

We are quite familiar with the tube now, as we have been taking that everywhere.

Time for bed, we have another long day tomorrow.
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Again, sorry for the long post, but it was hard to not include so many pictures.

First Day in London -recap

Here's what I originally posted on our first day in London:

We have had a full day in London today. We arrived at Pax Lodge, checked in, and then found a red bus tour. It was a great way to see a lot of London while sitting. We are so tired right now that a bus tour was the perfect thing.
We are at a restaurant now and then will go back to our rooms for the night.

I'm really looking forward to a good nights sleep.
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Here's some pictures from that day:

This is some of our group walking from Pax Lodge to the Underground station. Of course, it was raining.



Some of our group on the double decker bus tour. It was a great way to get a feel for London, especially when we were tired and it was raining.



Our first trip over the Thames river.


Driving through London - on the wrong side of the road!

Our first glimpse of Big Ben.

I'll be posting pictures from the trip for the next couple of days.

I am still fighting jet lag. I wake up around 1:30am and I'm a bit confused as to where I am. The first couple of nights I was home Rominal said that I would say in my sleep, "hello? Who's there? Are you a kid?" I have to admit, for a couple of nights I wasn't real sure who I was sleeping next to or where I was. Hopefully I've got that figured out now.