{"id":41,"date":"2012-06-21T20:40:40","date_gmt":"2012-06-21T18:40:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/?p=41"},"modified":"2012-06-22T05:28:16","modified_gmt":"2012-06-22T03:28:16","slug":"rain-londons-best-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/?p=41","title":{"rendered":"Rain: London&#8217;s Best Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120621-193933.jpg\"><img src=\"http:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120621-193933.jpg\" alt=\"20120621-193933.jpg\" style='float:left' width=\"200px\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" \/><\/a>Yes, London&#8217;s infamous rain has graced us with its presence (even in June).  No matter even with the rain it was still a balmy 21\u00b0 C (70\u00b0 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&#8217;s famous bridges and hopped off the bus at the Tower of London.<a href=\"http:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120621-193908.jpg\" style='float:right'><img src=\"http:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120621-193908.jpg\" alt=\"20120621-193908.jpg\" style='float:right' width=\"200px\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;ve been able to renovate and open more of the nearly 1000 year old castle and they&#8217;ve added to the already impressive collection of the crown jewels (adding the new jewels from the queen&#8217;s recent Diamond Jubilee).  Although they don&#8217;t allow pictures of the crown jewels here is a picture of a picture of my favorite, the Sovereign&#8217;s Sceptre used for coronation, the huge diamond in the middle is a 530 karat diamond!<a href=\"http:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120621-193818.jpg\"><img src=\"http:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120621-193818.jpg\" alt=\"20120621-193818.jpg\" style='float:left' width=\"200px\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s quite literally under a street.  <a href=\"http:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120621-193922.jpg\"><img src=\"http:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120621-193922.jpg\" alt=\"20120621-193922.jpg\" style='float:right' width=\"200px\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" \/><\/a>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.<a href=\"http:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120621-230721.jpg\"><img src=\"http:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/20120621-230721.jpg\" alt=\"20120621-230721.jpg\" style='float:left' width=\"200px\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow we start early an take the train through the Chunnel to Paris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, London&#8217;s infamous rain has graced us with its presence (even in June). No matter even with the rain it was still a balmy 21\u00b0 C (70\u00b0 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[14,13,15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283,"href":"https:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asyouwill.com\/italy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}