While we were waiting on the other four girls to show up at Buckingham Palace we continued to look around and take in the scenery. We finally decided to go on and do our own thing. Next we went to do our Big Bus Tour, which takes you around London and all the popular sites. It was neat because you could get on and off whenever you wanted. We learned lots of interesting things while doing the tour. Like, the original Hard Rock Cafe began in London. (I was very interested in this! If you know me well, you know how much I love Hard Rock Cafe's!) It all started when two American tourists came to London and could not find a decent hamburger anywhere. So, they started their own restaurant. Eric Clapton became a regular at this restaurant and sat in the same seat every time. One day Eric Clapton came in the restaurant and someone was in his seat. So, the next time he came to the restaurant he took one of his guitars with him and put it above his seat to claim it as his own. That is how the Hard Rock Cafe began! How interesting! :)
On the top deck of our Big Bus Tour!
Queen Victoria's Father
We also saw a chinese protest while we were on our tour!
In the middle of our Big Bus Tour, I get a phone call from Sarah, a girl from the group we were suppose to meet at Buckingham Palace. She was calling to inform us that they would not be joining us for the rest of the day because Laura Leigh's wallet had been stolen while they were at Buckingham Palace. At least Sarah had been to London before so she was kind enough to stay behind and help Laura Leigh talk to the police and get all of her credit cards canceled. This phone call was very scary. From that point on I was checking my purse like every 5 minutes.
We began to get a little antsy sitting on the bus while it was stopping every 5 minutes. We decided to get off a few stops down and toured trafalgar square on our own. We met up with two other girls there as well. We ate at a Malaysian restaurant for lunch while we waited on the Harry Potter Tour to began.
Here is a picture of our 3 pound ($5) Coke Cola at the Malaysian Restaurant. Absolutely ridiculous, but I was not up for drinking tap water! ew!
HARRY POTTER TOUR:
All I can say for this is that I am glad this walking tour was included in our Big Bus Tour ticket. WE began the tour because we thought it would be neat to see the places in London where the Harry Potter movies were filmed. Needless to say, we stayed on the tour for about 15 minutes. It was not what we though it was and it was a lot of EXTRA walking.
TOWER OF LONDON:
This is one of the last things that we did on our full day in London. We had no idea that we would need a whole day to see every thing there is to see inside the Tower of London. This place is amazing. Not only did they hold prisoners there and torture them but this is where the King/Queen's lived for over 500 years!!
The Tower of London is a total of 18 acres. It has an outer wall and an inner wall to protect the Palace and towers inside. The stone, cement, wood, and steel are they same from the original building of the tower. Small repairs were made in the 1700's but other than that it is all original. That is amazing.
We took part in a 45 minute guided tour of the tower. It was very interesting! We walked where Ann Boleyn walked her last steps! ahh so exciting to relive history. We also walked through the bedroom where Richard and Edward were murdered by their uncle so he could become King!
Also at the Tower of London, you can see the crown Jewels! This was pretty amazing, but also kind of disappointing. I thought there were going to be more jewels than there actually were. They had a lot of crowns from previous Kings as well as robes and coronation rings from the queen's. The majority of the "jewels"were gold "dinner ware" It was very impressive, but not exactly what I would consider to be a jewel. I have no pictures of the Crown Jewels, since photography is not allowed in the crown jewels exhibit.
Overall the Tower of London was very interesting. Over 100 people still live there and they still have guards that stand around the palace in the Tower. The people who still live here live in small houses built around the connecting tours. They don't live in the palace.
We saw a small changing of the guards ceremony there. We ran out of time and we were not able to see every corner of the tower like we had planed because they closed at 5:30! Which I say is way to early.
Changing of the Guards @ The Tower of London.
Of course we had to eat supper at the Hard Rock Cafe. Well lets just say we had a very interesting time finding this place. We walked around for forever trying to find the place. We literally were walking in circles and the restaurant was in the middle of our circle. LONDON IS A VERY BIG CITY! haha. We even asked like ten people how to get there. Finally we talked to an "upper class" man who gave us very good directions. When we finally arrived at the Hard Rock Cafe, we had to wait for TWO hours to get a table! It was a long time to wait but we really wanted to eat here, I mean, it was the original!! It was well worth the wait too. The food their is soo amazing as well as the atmosphere!
THE NEXT DAY.....
WESTMINSTER ABBEY:
Although it was Sunday, we did take a small tour of Westminster Abbey! This church is huge!! We found it very weird that people were buried under the walk ways.. The slab for the graves was part of the cement that you walked on. I found this to be very strange and I felt bad for walking over dead people. We tried to peep inside the sanctuary however they had people standing by all the doors and considering we were carrying our luggage with us, we though it would be a tad bit inappropriate to walk through the sanctuary.
I will definitely have to make a trip back to London to attend an actual church service at Westminster Abbey! And see a lot of other things that we did not have time to see.
Sorry some of the pictures are sideways!
CHANGING OF THE GUARDS:
After we left Westminster Abbey we headed towards Buckingham Palace to see the Changing of the Guards. On the way we passed Methodist Central Hall. I thought this was neat, but we didn't go inside since it was Sunday!
When we arrived at Buckingham Palace the place was packed!!!! And we even got their an hour early. The place was a mad house! People would literally bump into you so they could see the guards even though they weren't do anything.
Once the changing of the guards began, it was like a huge ceremony. The have a band that marches from the streets into the gates of the palace and guards walked by on horses. It was really a big todo! By this time my camera had already died so I had to take pictures on my phone. I also have several videos on my phone of the changing of the guards ceremony, however, I could not get them to upload onto the blog. SORRY!!
The changing of the guards seemed to last forever. It was interesting at first, but it was taking a long time and we were tired of people pushing and shoving so we decided to go to the Queen's Gallery and gift shop to look around. It was very expensive, but I did get a special someone a souvenir from here!! After we left the gift shop we began to walk back to the tube station also know as the underground. When we did we noticed that the horses and band were coming right at us, so of course we had to stop and watch. It was really fascinating.
After we watched the horses, guards, and band march by we walked to the tube. It was finally time to say goodbye to London. SO SAD! I Love London and I will definitely be going back again!!
Once we got off the tube at the train station we quickly walked to the information desk to see which platform our train would be at. Then we decided to grab some lunch before we boarded the train. Well this ended up taking a little longer than we had planned so we ended up running down the platform to make it onto the train before it closed the doors and left. We hardly made it in time! Whew, have you ever tried running with a duffel bag on your shoulder and food in your hands? Its a very complex task. We made it on the train and luckily the lady only asked to see our passes and didn't stamp them. YAY! So that means next time we need a train we don't have to buy a pass! woo hoo! Free transportation to London there & back. The train ride back was bout three and a half hours long and we were all exhausted. I think just about every one fell asleep on the way back!
We were so excited to get home but we hated to leave London!
There is so much that we did not get to do!! We didn't get to go to Abbey road, Kensington Palace, St. Paul's Cathedral, or tour the sanctuary at Westminster Abbey. Overall it was a lovely trip and we did a lot in a short amount of time. But definitely going on my list of places to visit again!!
So this concludes my London trip. I hope this post isn't to unorganized for you. I feel like I kind of talked about a little bit of every thing every where. HA. It's hard to remember every thing exactly and put it in words.
MONDAY...BACK AT THE SCHOOLS:
Today was a great day at my schools. I helped some students with a program called "Toes by Toes" which is designed to help struggling readers. I also helped students with math during small groups. This gave me an opportunity to help the kids and also get to know them a little better. Before you knew it, it was lunch (or as they call it dinner time). It is so nice to have an hour for lunch! You can actually relax. After lunch my students changed their seating order. This took a long time!! We got 2 new students today as well. Now we have 40 students in one class! oh wow! After changing their seats it was time for P.E. This is done very differently here in England. The classroom teacher is the PE teacher. Also, the kids have to remember to bring their PE kits (dress out clothes) in order to be able to participate in PE! They are only 7 -8 year olds! After PE it was time for the school assembly.
AHHHH... Each American student has to lead an assembly and mine was today! The students listened to the Star Spangled Banner and learned a little history about it. They also watched a Georgia Southern University video clip to show them a little bit about our school. Then I showed the school a few slides about my class back in America and shared some pictures of my family! I think they all enjoyed it!!
Well that's all for tonight! I think I am all up to date now!
This coming up weekend we are going to Dublin, Ireland for St. Patrick's Day. That shall be interesting! I will definitely blog about it when we get back!
Thanks for reading!!
LOVE,
KM
Yay Sissy!! I am so jealous...haha.....hope you have a great week at school and a AWESOME SAFE WEEKEND in IRELAND! love you sissy and maci :)
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