DAY 3: BUCKINGHAM PALACE, TOWER OF LONDON, BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON EYE, ETC...

August 26, 2017

Day 3 was one of my FAVORITE days of the trip. It was a busy one and we saw SO MUCH STUFF!

Now I am going to constrain myself by not putting ALL of the cool photos on here. I will do my best to just put 4 or 5 photos from each place....I will TRY!

We woke up early and we loved the breakfast from this hotel. We noticed that every place we went in Europe served runny eggs, half cooked bacon, hot tomato halves, steamed or grill giant mushrooms, porridge, and fruit. I basically ate everything I'm not supposed to eat with diabetes. I ate muffins, toast and fruit. I didn't get any protein out of my breakfast. Pretty much just carbs! Oh, but they also served lots of olives, black, green and kalamata! I love those and different cheeses.

And we are off to see LONDON:

 BUCKINGHAM PALACE:

 Here we are at the Buckingham Palace...the Queen is actually in Scotland today!

 Every little thing is so ornate. All of the street lamps have crowns on them. I just love the details!

Had to get one photo of the guard. We actually see the changing of the guard tomorrow! So cool!

TOWER OF LONDON:
I loved hearing the history of this place! Oh my goodness the buildings are so old! I loved hearing about past kings. They were ruthless. If anyone had a different opinion...off with their heads! They executed so many people for the dumbest reasons! I loved seeing where Ann Boleyn really lived, the window she looked out of, and we walked where she walked...amazing!

 We saw the CROWN JEWELS. Oh my goodness! We couldn't take any pictures in there but I tell you it was amazing and fascinating!

We then went to the BRITISH LIBRARY. We saw the original lyrics written by The Beatles. They had a lot of cool stuff in there but that was my favorite! We didn't spend too much time here and we couldn't take photos.

Then we went to the BRITISH MUSEUM:
It was huge and there was so much cool stuff in here but my favorite was the dead body that was 2,000 years old! The Rosetta Stone, the cuneiform from Cyrus the Persian, the tablet with the flood info on it, and I loved all of the old weapons they used thousands of years ago. It was cool!

Here is PARLIAMENT:

That is Big Ben in the back of the Parliament Building


I loved TOWER BRIDGE. We walked over it on our way to ride the LONDON EYE...my favorite part of the day!

 We loved when we could find TOILETS. But did you know they cost money to use them?

And we all got our pics taken by the famous RED TELEPHONES...they are everywhere in England!

So after our tour we were on our own so we decided to stay in LONDON and not go back with the bus. We wanted to ride the LONDON EYE and some of our tour group joined us. It was a blast!

THE LONDON EYE: It is 443 ft tall and it goes 10 inches every second and takes 30 minutes to go all the way around. You're in a capsule that holds about 30 people. It isn't scary like a ferris wheel. This was super cool to see the views from all around it. The pics don't do it justice.

 Here we are walking on the bridge toward the London Eye

 Here we are inside the capsule.

Some of our incredible views from the Eye:

The water you see here is the River Thames pronounced Tim.

 Big Ben

Then we had to figure out how to get back to the hotel. We rode The Tube and had to make a transfer too. We did it! We rode it for about 45 minutes to the airport then took the Hotel Shuttle back to the hotel.

We got back to our hotel pretty late but Wow! We saw so much stuff today it was insane!

Here is the poem for roll call for the next morning:

                                    We saw the Castle, Crown Jewels, and Big Ben,

                                    We rode the Eye, and made good friends!

                                    We rode the tube, the train, the bus,

                                    And Group 5 still has wanderlust!

                                    P.S. We walked 9 miles and over 21,000 steps!!