England Pilgrimage Day Four

A day on our own in London.  Kris, Jan, Holly and I set off for a day on the town.  We started on the Tube - and it was crazy busy!  It was tough for the four of us to get around - I can’t imagine trying to corral the entire group of 26 during peak hours!  At one point - Holly and I barely made it into the car and were slouched over to keep the doors from hitting us!

Our first stop for the morning was King’s Cross - home of Platform 9 3/4 from Harry Potter.  We, of course, all had pictures taken with the trolley (aka shopping cart in America).  It was neat to see the train station also - and fun to figure out how to get around the city in the Underground - I finally figured it all out on our last day in London.

Our next stop was St. Paul’s Cathedral and then across the millennium bridge to the Globe Theater.  And across the street was a Starbucks where we ended up sitting and just chatting for a while - it was just a really great day with wonderful weather and fantastic friends and it was just beginning.  

We walked over to Southwark Cathedral - I don’t remember who had a friend that recommended it - but is was a wonderful stop on our tour of the city.  After our time at the Cathedral, we went next door to a Pub (featured in a Harry Potter movie and Bridget Jones’s Diary) and the first of the cranky barkeeps that we came across on our trip and I had fish and chips for the first time.  It was yummy!  Had a pint of cider with it as well.  After lunch we wandered the path along the Thames River - and one of the most fascinating things was that all the businessmen were wearing suits - and they were all wandering around - don’t they work?!

We were on our way to the London Eye.  And how cool was that to see the city from so far up.  The views were just wonderful.  After the Eye, we decided to get ice cream, but it was expensive right there - so we were close enough to Westminster Abbey that we just walked over the bridge of the Thames and went back to the Abbey for the really yummy ice cream we had earlier in the week and also had a chance to wander through the gift shop which was closed the first time we were there - they had Christmas ornaments of Henry the VIII and all of his wives!

Finally we paid homage to the Queen and went by Buckingham Palace.  The Queen was in residence that day - and it looked like she was getting ready for some kind of event.  There were people arriving and being escorted in - never looked at the papers to see what it was - but it was all rather fascinating.  And thus ended the daylight hours of the day - we wandered back to the hotel - which was only about a block away and had a bit of a low key dinner - most of the group were out and about and doing their own thing for dinner.  After dinner - Kris, Jan, Terrie, Bettina and I went across the street for girls night out at the pub.  A lovely end to just a wonderful day!  Enjoy the pictures here...  

And check out something I learned about Picasa tonight - if you click on View Map - it will show you a map of where all the pics were taken - how cool is that - I don’t know if I got all the pics in exactly the right place - but I’ll work on that for the previous entries and the future entries - VERY COOL!

And stay tuned for our next day when we had yet another mishap with our morning alarm and we board the coach for the start of our cross country journey.