Hi everyone! Wow, London is sooooo coooooollllll! We got up and had a pretty good continental breakfast with the hotel and then we set out for the "Original Tour Bus Company" which is a double decker tour bus and the upstairs floor is open. It's the kind that makes several stops and you just hop on and off where you want to get off. It has been an amazing day riding around on this thing. Sitting up on the top open deck you get some amazing views of all othe old and new buildings. Our first stop was Buckingham Palace. The flag was up which means the Queen in town. What we didn't expect was that every year they open part of the palace to the public for viewing for two months. We just happen to be here during the last two weeks. So we ended up spending 3 hours touring the unbelievable opulent rooms that normally the public would never seen. We saw the ball room, the corination room, the banquet room, the art gallery, stair cases, the inner court yard, and more. We were able to pick up great earphones with prerecorded explanations of the rooms and so we could walk through all the rooms at our leisure. Some of the rooms just took your breath away. It was gorgous. Hugh paintings of past monarchs and the thought occurred to us, what must have it been like to be born royalty and not know anything else in your life and to have every luxury imaginable? So we had a great time checking out all the dishes, gifts to the queen in the past, and chandeleirs, and more. When we went outside (we entered the tour from the side of the palace) we were in the back of the palace that faced 30 acres of green gorgous gardens surrounded by brick, wired fence for their privacy and protection. Then we came out and met a Sgt. Constable who talked with Craig and Stan. They compared salaries, benefits, and stress levels. He told us that he had enjoyed visiting America because a good dinner in London costs about $50 but he was thrilled about a steak house we have called Sizzler where he could get a good steak and all you can eat salad for about $8. He told us that if he lived in America, he would get fat. Well we are eating well here. We are finding ways to economize on food. After we exited the palace gardens, we walked back around to the front gates and saw the balcony where Prince Charles and Princess Diana stood after their wedding and saw the mile long street that leads up to the front of the palace. The ornate work on the gates and the statues everywhere leave you in no doubt that the premises are royalty.
Then we got back on the bus and when to Sherlock Holmes Pub where we had bought a prepurchased lunch of Fish and Chips from the bus company. It was good and Karen was so looking forward to it. There are pubs everywhere and they are so old English looking. Then we got off and visited West Minster Abby. This church was built in 1066 and it was unbelievable to realize that it had been around for about a 1000 years. We weren't sure what to expect inside and we found that many famous people were buried there. Some of the most famous was Sir Issac Newton and Darwin. They also had several kings and queens there. Mary Queen of Scots was there as well as King Henry the VIII. We walked around in there for quite a while reading all the headstones on the walls and the floor. We saw the same corniation chair that has been used since the first corination in 1066 that Queen Elizabeth used in 1953 for her corination. This was the same church that Charles and Diana got married in and it was cool to imagine the wedding there. Then we rode the bus for a while just to look around. We saw Big Ben and Parliment and the London Eye (hugh observation ferris wheel) all of which we are going to do tomorrow along with a boat ride on the river Thames. (We ran out of time today) We saw Picadelly Circus and walked around Trafalgar Square. Karen and Stan were stopped by the BCC and interviewed. That was fun to watch. Then we got out and checked out the Tower of London which back in midevil times was a prison and execution facility. By the time we got there it was closed so that is also on the list of do's for tomorrow. We drove over the London bridge. The bus tour was so worth it as it would have been difficult to drive to all these spots and we have seen no parking anywhere. The driving alone is scary. Craig and Kim were recently there and \I don't know how Craig did it. Rush hour around downtown was interesting to see how they work the roundabouts and not crash. We ended up making a couple of repeat trips around the bus route to get where we wanted to go as we missed a part of the tour earlier but by 6 o'clock we were beat and headed home. We found a KFC by the hotel and decided that it was a cheaper way to go for dinner. There is still so much we could go see but everything costs to enter and on the tour we found out that London is the most expensive city in the world right now and the exchange rate proves that. So we are saving a lot of extras for the next trip as we want to come back and see more. As I will probably say this about every city we see, I think that we will be making more trips to Europe in the future.
Everyone here is so friendly. We are having a great time and miss you all so much.
Hope everyone is well. Lots of Love to all from all of us in the UK!