Yes, London’s infamous rain has graced us with its presence (even in June). No matter even with the rain it was still a balmy 21° C (70° F). It was decided that we should do the touristy thing, much to my chagrin, and take a tour bus around the city. This ended up working well for us though. We drove through town, past Buckingham palace and Parliament, across man of London’s famous bridges and hopped off the bus at the Tower of London.

I was last here 7 years ago and I found it interesting how much of the city still seems familiar. The tower has changed a bit though, they’ve been able to renovate and open more of the nearly 1000 year old castle and they’ve added to the already impressive collection of the crown jewels (adding the new jewels from the queen’s recent Diamond Jubilee). Although they don’t allow pictures of the crown jewels here is a picture of a picture of my favorite, the Sovereign’s Sceptre used for coronation, the huge diamond in the middle is a 530 karat diamond!

After mulling through the armory in the central white tower we left an ate lunch at a small restaurant in an underground market place, it’s quite literally under a street. Then we took a boat up the Thames, connected back with the tour bus, spent a few minutes in the British museum, since they were only 5 minutes before closing. We then waited for a bus which never came, not realizing we were past the operating time, took a hike down the road, then hired a cab back to the hotel. All in all a good day, and we even got to meet up with a friend who used to live just down the street, but now lives in North London, Ashley Vanderford.

Tomorrow we start early an take the train through the Chunnel to Paris.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2012 at 8:40 pm and is filed under England. You can follow responses to this entry through the Comments RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.