London: Part II

    Once again, I apologize for the absurdly long post yesterday. I'm doing this blog for my benefit as well as your's dear reader. I'm not keeping a travel journal so this is my way of documenting what I did while here!
    Sunday started out with yet another great English breakfast. This time Toby cooked us sausage, scrambled eggs, baked beans, and toast. My job was to butter the toast, ha! After breakfast, we got ready and met Laura and Aamayna at the Tower of London. That was one thing I didn't get to do during my last visit to London so I was particularly excited. We talked a lot about this over the weekend, but I was struck at how OLD everything was. As Emma would say, "Dang, y'all!" I think we both comprehended that nothing in the US compares, age wise, with the things we see in Europe. We walked around the tower, but didn't go in. Then we walked to the Tower Bridge, which is a famous and familiar sight of London. They have recently added Olympic rings from the top of it, but when we walked past the first time, they were folded up. I was really looking forward to seeing them so it was a bit of a disappointment that we didn't see them hanging down.

Emma, Laura and me. You can barely see the rings on the top bridge.

Americans only!

Emma's picture is the optical illusion. Mine's just the silly angle.

We got to see the bridge go up and a boat go through!

    We walked to the bridge and met Aamayna halfway across the bridge. At this point, I was so upset about the rings that it was enough to be directly underneath them.

    Next, we walked to Starbucks and grabbed coffee then walked back the way we came. On our way back, the rings were down! We were thrilled to see them and for yet another photo op!

Our best "cheesing it" pose

Me with the Rings!

A view of one of  the tower from the end of the bridge.

     We left the Tower of London and headed to Buckingham Palace. It started to rain just as we were walking up, so once it stopped there were very few people there-for a bit! We got to see some of the famous guards. We also got to see them open the gate and watch someone come out. Unfortunately, that was slightly anti-climatic as it didn't appear to be anyone important. Although, if you're getting to go to Buckingham Palace then you're probably pretty important in some respect.

One of the "fancy" gates and a view of the palace

Big view of Buckingham Palace

    Our next stop was Trafalgar Square but we got started in the wrong direction. So after a minor detour, we set out! We tried to walk through Hyde Park, the park that is basically the lawn of Buckingham Palace, but it was blocked off from a weekend concert and construction. A lot of London is being spruced up for the Olympics and it is really nice. However, it was clear that it was quite a pain for locals. I guess I forgot that they'll still have to go on with daily life despite the Games! We finally made it to Trafalgar Square, which is near National Portrait Gallery and (temporarily) the Official Olympic Games Countdown Clock. We sat by a fountain and took more time for a photo opportunity. We didn't go inside of the National Portrait Gallery, but if we go back, that is on our to-do list.

The Olympic Game Countdown Clock

The gorgeous fountain we sat in front of

Emma, Laura, Toby and me

Awkward face

Laura felt left out without a camera

So many hands! So many cameras!

Tower in Trafalgar Square

    10 Downing Street, home to the Prime Minister, is just down the street on Whitehall, so we walked there next. It's so funny how you can tell that it used to be a normal city street but it down blocked and heavily guarded. Ahh, modern security worries! Either way, it was very interesting to see, and I now have a reference when I see any pictures of a PM coming out of 10 Downing Street. We were headed to Oxford Circus, London's version of Times Square. It is not as big or well lit, but there are buildings with huge screens. On our way, it began to rain so hard, we had to stop underneath the ledge of a building to wait it out. This downpours are common, but they usually only last a few minutes. This one wasn't showing signs of letting up so we made a run for the tube. We took a few pictures at Oxford Circus and headed to Soho for some dinner. We ate in a small Italian restaurant, in their basement. We were all so hungry and it took forever for someone to come down to take our order. I still say they forgot about us in the basement...Once again, we giggled and goofed off throughout the meal. We each ordered, and just about finished, our own pizzas. As we were paying, a family of 6 ordered one pizza and one calzone for their table. Needless to say, we felt SUPER good about ourselves...not.
    After dinner, we said our goodbyes to Laura and Aamayna and headed back to Toby's to get our bags. We were up to our own devices to get ourselves to Victoria Station, because that is where the bus to Oxford picks up. We decided to take the bus back since we have (now) 8 days of travel on our rail passes. We didn't want to use up one more day just to travel back home. It was so surreal heading back to Oxford, because at that point, I had been in London for longer than Oxford! It was quite familiar to me yet. After a bit of confusion, we found the bus stop and the worker told us we had 2 minutes until the next bus showed up (they run every hour). I still had to get cash from an ATM so it was a bit hectic trying to get that done in 2 minutes. Luckily, we did that and made it back just in time! It's crazy to think that if anything in our evening had taken 2 minutes longer, we might have had to wait another hour for a bus. At 10:30, we were on the bus headed back and by 11:40, we arrived! We were exhausted but in awe of our memorable weekend!
    I just don't think I've made it clear what a great time we had this weekend, and what wonderful memories that we made. I'm so thankful to everyone we met for going above and beyond to make this weekend special. I feel like we got a sense of "real" London and how people our age are living there! We were so lucky! I loved meeting all the people, swapping accents, learning pronunciations, seeing new things, eating new foods, and overall experiencing a whole new world! I can only hope that the rest of my trip is as good as this weekend.

In the words of my British friends....."don't hate me coz you ain't me"