Day Two Tuesday London Trip June 2018

We were up, dressed, loaded with maps, tour books, water and snacks and out the door after our traditional English breakfast. Every morning we enjoyed fried eggs, potatoes, fried tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans, fish, sausage, pancakes, cereal, yogurt, fruit and pastries. Allison especially enjoyed the hot tea. We also enjoyed the train ride into the city, checking out all the sights along the way, like the Wimbledon train stop-soon to be very busy.

We took the train and subway into London to Trafalgar square. We were a little too late to view the morning changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. Allison and I had a sense of the area since we had an intense, 3 day orientation through our previous Girl Scout troop visit. It was fun to stop into areas again that we recognized. However, it was hard to judge true distance when looking at a map and then actually trying to walk everywhere. Especially when streets and sidewalks were closed off for construction, or when we could not find a road sign. I had to use my homing pigeon sense of direction while Tom attempted to follow his phone app(we decided to follow my homing pigeon directions with my paper map!). I just hard a hard time reading the very small print on my pocket maps since I left the reading glasses at home!  I also forgot how convenient it was to be on a tour and have your very own bus waiting to take you everywhere.

We started our tour at Trafalgar square in front of the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery. We love the 4 huge lions in the square made of bronze from Spanish galleons during the French and Spanish war in 1805. We heard they did not know what the back end of a lion looked like when they made the sculptures so they fashioned them after the shape of a dog. Interesting! The square is a gathering point for many events including concerts and plays with temporary stages, as well as protests! It is also just up the road from Parliament and West Minster. It's also a great place to view Big Ben, but not much to see right now as he is undergoing renovation and covered in scaffolding. And fortunately no protests, but it turns out the Queen was down the street on an outing, so traffic was all backed up as the police(bobbies) rerouted the flow of cars, double decker buses and taxis. Except there really is no other place to go with so much traffic. Most of the streets in London are narrow and curvy(and of course they drive on the wrong side of the road!). we decided to take a quick walk through the National Gallery(no such thing as a quick walk). There were a lot of amazing original paintings from Van Gogh to Monet,  and Picasso. We did not realize however that the National Portrait Gallery was a whole separate building, so we skipped it for another day. We mainly stopped into Trafalgar square to catch a Hop on Hop off Tour bus with our London Pass. We thought it would be a good idea, after speaking to Tom's brother and getting touring tips of London, to do a drive by of all the highlights in the area and then figure out what we really wanted to see and visit. Except our bus was not moving very fast due to the traffic(like not at all), and some of the strong accents of the tour guides were hard to understand. We switched to another bus line with ear phones for a recorded tour and faster moving traffic. There were two bus lines, a short loop and a long loop. We switched to the long loop, but got distracted early and stopped into Harrod's Dept store. Allison and I had so wanted to go in during our last visit to London, but we just drove by in the past. It is an amazing store-the biggest in London with the most fascinating items to buy, including food. The previous owner, from Saudi, Mohamed Al-Fayed, was in the news not too long ago for his son, Dodi Al- Fayed who was dating Princess Diana and also died in the car crash in Paris. It is currently owned by Qatar Holdings and they sell everything from appliances, clothes, priceless paintings by Picasso, electronics, food items and I hear expensive cars, planes, whatever you need to be a rich person! We enjoyed the  cheap souvenir shopping and a wonderful lunch in the cafe upstairs. Tom was taken by surprise with their tasty fresh baked bread and Allison and I loved our dessert chocolates from the food court-favorite of the Queen. We could have just stayed in the food court all day, just amazed at the choices-sushi bar, caviar bar, sandwich bar and of course fish n chips bar. Not to mention a fruit/veggie market and bakery, meat, cheese and seafood counters. But we were back at the bus stop waiting for our tour to continue. We finished the long loop and then switched buses by the Sherlock Holmes museum and Madame Trussauds Wax Museum to take the small bus loop closer to our train station back to the hotel. We got off near the London Tower(another place to visit on our list for another day). We switched to the train station and traveled to Kings Cross, home of the Harry Potter Train Station and Platform 9 3/4. We ate dinner at a pub that overlooked the Harry Potter Store and then Allison posed for a photo shoot with her new Raven Claw scarf. It looks like she is running through the wall with her wand and luggage to the Harry Potter train station. We also said hello to the life sized TRex on display for the new Jurassic World movie. Very fun way to end the day.