Here's what I posted early in the morning on Friday, August 13.
It's Friday morning in London. We are on our way to the Tower of London. We decided to take the buses instead of the tubes because we can see more of the city on the way there. We have taken 2 buses so far and now we are on the upper deck of the second bus.
A very sweet lady took pity on us and let us follow her most of the way.
It is our last day here and we have another full day ahead, trying to pack it all in.
Oh, the girls really enjoyed meet other girl scouts from St. Vincent last night. They are also staying at Pax Lodge. We hope to get home early enough tonight to meet with them again.
Special message to D&P, happy house closing day!
Ok, I'm off for now.
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We knew that the day would probably mean rain, so we all wore our rain boots, or Wellies as the English people call them. Mary Helen didn't have a pair, so she's in the black sneakers.
They weren't the most comfortable shoes to do a lot of walking in, but it did rain a ton that day, so they were great at keeping my feet nice and dry.
Bailey and I left our Wellies with two wonderful ladies at the end of camp in Cambridge. Claire and Caroline, I hope you are enjoying them!
Here's a look at the London Tower (on the left). The grass you see there is the old moat. It has since been filled in with grass. The London Tower is not just one tower - it is essentially the old village where kings and queens lived, and where they were beheaded.
We had a great tour guide, the woman on the right.
Elizabeth (seen above on the far right) had written a paper about Rudolf Hess (Hitler's Secretary) last year in school. The tour guide mentioned that Hess had been imprisoned at the London Tower for a couple of days and there was a letter with his signature on it there. When Elizabeth told the tour guide about her paper, she took the seven of us to the off-limits place where the paper was.
The storey goes that Hess was put into prison, but he did not know where he was being held. A guard asked him for his signature and it was a piece of paper that said Tower of London. Hess said, "oh, so that's where I am." and signed the paper.
You can see the letter and the story in the frame below.
It was a very special treat to get to see that, and all of the other memorabilia that they had in this room.
Here's a picture of some of the Tower of London.
At several places at the entrance to the city of London, you will see a dragon. The bus tour guide said that they are to protect the city. We found one where we could get the girls picture with it.
After this, we decided to do some shopping. We went to Covent Gardens.
Here's what I originally posted that afternoon.
Well, my friend was just pick picketed here at Covent Gardens. Good news is that Melissa felt what was happening and made a fuss. The store is currently holding the lady and we are waiting on the police.
If the police ever get here we think all will be well. This will be a story we will always tell about this trip.
I will tell more about it later.
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Too bad we hadn't seen this sign outside the store where we shopping. We might have gone somewhere else.
What happened was a woman was following around Melissa the whole time we were in this store. When Melissa was at the check-out counter, she felt something and turned around to see her money on the floor. All of it was there except for 50 pounds. She realized that the woman behind her had opened her purse and pulled it out, she had just dropped it on the floor.
Melissa started saying, "you stole my money!" The woman denied everything and ran down to the basement. The store manager, after talking to the woman for a while, got her to admit that she had stole the money and she gave it back to the manager.
In the meantime, we waited for the police to arrive - and we waited for 2 hours.
Here's Bailey, Melissa and Tiffany waiting patiently for the police.
Finally they came and they arrested the woman. She's in this van.
Then we had to go to the police station and give our statements. Of course, we had to walk a ways to get there.
The whole adventure took at least 4-5 hours, and it was not how we wanted to spend Friday night in London. We had planned to get home early and do some laundry to get ready to leave for camp the next day. Oh well.
Here's all of us going down into the tube station, very late at night.
On the good side, Melissa received a letter from the London police department today apologizing for her ordeal.
We though that was pretty cool.
Cheers!
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