If you have ever been to London, you'll recognize these words:
Almost every time we stepped off the subway, we heard, "Mind the gap." One might have also seen other variations such as mind your head or mind the step. Other signage on the ground that I appreciated was "Look Left" and "Look Right" on the roadways telling me in what direction to look for oncoming traffic. One of Chris' coworkers came within an inch of being smunched because he failed to look.
We headed toward Westminster and passed Westminster Abbey already overflowing with people.
Our first stop of the day was Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guard. We passed by the guard inspection area where there was also a guard band practicing. The song was beautiful. Wish I knew what it was called.
We were amazed with the throngs of people surrounding the palace and filling all available sidewalk space. We found a spot up on a wall and claimed it for the next hour. We had a lot of fun people-watching and hearing a variety of different languages being spoken. There were police men stationed at the crosswalks overseeing crowd control. They had their jobs cut out for them. People would never stopped crossing. As it was, the policeman we were most entertained with had to keep yelling out, "The light is red. Stop crossing. STOP crossing!" After awhile he would start going after the thoughtless souls, turn them around in the middle of the street and send them back to the sidewalk. After all, cars were coming. The people had no sense whatsoever.
After a short wait, a guard band followed by marching guards marched around the roundabout in front of the palace and through the gates. We then got a front row view as another band and marching guards passed in front of us. It was safer for us to stay up on the wall with all of the people around, so we stayed and watched until the guards left the palace grounds. It would have been cool to actually see the change take place. We walked around the area a bit, looked through the wrought iron fence at the newly installed guards and then headed off for more adventure via the St. James's Park.
We stopped first at the Churchill War Museum. It was something Chris really wanted to see; we spent a couple hours looking through the entire museum. We missed lunch but snacked on granola bars, nuts, and fruit. We tried to fit in as much site seeing as possible and walked for miles. We saw the typical tourist sites--Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the London Eye, Trafalgar Square.
We found mementos for the girls close to Trafalgar Square and were able to Facetime with them in the square.
We took the tube to Notting Hill and sadly were too late for the Portobello Market. They were just taking things down as we arrived. We walked around some and looked for a place to eat. No luck finding anything that was really interesting. In our wandering, we decided to walk toward the next tube stop through various Notting Hill neighborhoods. After taking the subway back to our Tower stop, we finally decided on the White Hart pub for dinner.
It was at White Hart that I learned about black pudding. I don't recommend it. I didn't order it, but Chris looked it up on his iPad for me. "Black pudding, also known as blood sausage, is a pudding made of curdled and boiled pig blood, mixed with chunks of pork fat (for texture and juiciness) and spices, then stuffed into a sausage casing." Dis.gus.ting. Seriously, the food choices in London were not thrilling. I couldn't live there simply because Mexican food was not a part of their culture.
We decided to continue walking back to the hotel after dinner for a late dessert at the City Cafe. So weird that when we were going to bed, the girls were just getting home from school, and we had to stay awake just to be able to talk to them. We had a quick chat with Amy and lights out.