Europe Part 1 - England

On Friday August 1st we left for our anniversary get-away and our first accomplishment was to survive the 9 hour flight. Did pretty good, no fights for leg room and since we had our own TV / Movies / Games we did ok. We get through customs and stand in line for our metro card so we can get into the city. We get on the metro train and here is where Jason became 12 years old again. The train ended at a stop called Cockfosters. So I wasn't embarrassed until about 10 hours into the trip. We get to our hotel, drop off our bags and head off to a double decker bus tour. We had a good time until right before we hit all the major sites it starts pouring down rain. This was a theme for our trip - rain. It rained in some form or fashion every day.

Here are some London tourist attractions from our 5 days in London. Some of them you can tell it rained or that we got caught in the rain.

 

The Underground, double decker buses, Picadilly Circus, the Texas Embassy which was oddly near all the other countries' embassies, Tower Bridge, Westminster Abbey, telephone booth, Big Ben, Winston Churchill, protestors across from Parliament, Parliament, sand sculpture at Harrods, Peter Pan, Rosetta stone, Trafalgar Square, Jason at the Tower of London, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Beefeaters at the Tower, Guarding the Crown Jewels, using the Royal Mailbox, London Cabbies, Downing Street (as close as we could get), Jason on the London Eye, and us ending our vacation on the London Eye.

Here are the all the castles or royal family related stuff.

 

Row 1 - Buckingham Palace, Row 2 - Windsor Castle which we visited on the Queen Mother's birthday so her grave was full of flowers, Row 3 - Kensington Palace (where Diana lived) and the Price Albert Memorial, Row 4 - Whitehall Palace now the Mounted Guard house

Something about London is that you can tell they are getting ready for the 2012 Olympics. All the tube stations are in the process of "engineering" which means they are making them step free. So this made for some interesting routes when lines were down over the weekends. All the buildings like Buckingham Palace, Harrods and countess others are getting facelifts.