Day 3

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Today consisted of a whole lot of walking! In the morning we walked to try and catch the 'changing of the guard' ceremony; however, we ended up arriving as soon as it was over, so hopefully we will be able to catch it tomorrow morning! After that we walked to Covent Gardens, which is the young and 'hip' part of London with tons of great stores and an outdoor marketplace, street performers and cafes. We had lunch there and then walked through the Picadilly Circus area, which is considered the 'Times Square' of London and has tons of cool restaurants, theatres bars, and clubs. From there we walked to Bond Street, but first we walked through the Burlington Arcade. The arcades in London are these covered corridors with tons of tiny expensive, upscale shops on either side, and you have to ring a little doorbell and the people working in each shop let you in. We only went into the Pandora shop there because we thought it would be one of the only ones that would let us in while wearing our 'denim.' Apparently they have relaxed the rules in the past few years, because last time Josh tried to walk through (about 5 years ago) they wouldn't allow him in wearing runners and jeans.

Bond Street was unreal! It has all the stores like Rolex, Gucci, Tiffany, Cartier, and every other designer flagship store one could think of. The streets were packed with Bentleys, Rolls Royces, Mercedes, and Aston Martins (most with personal drivers). Every store also had a doorman that stares at everyone walking past and probably would not have let us into any of them in what we were wearing. From Bond St. we walked down Oxford Street which is one of the busiest streets in London and was packed with people, including tons of tourists.

After the busy shopping streets, we walked through Green Park and Hyde Park which were absolutely beautiful. We saw the war monuments and walked along Princess Diana's Memorial Walkway. Then, we took our first ride on 'the tube' in order to get back to the flat. At that point, we were getting tired and our feet were getting sore, so we got a quick snack and a pint at yet another English pub and then went home. We had a 3 course take-away Chinese meal with Gerald for dinner, which was so different from the Chinese food we're used too (duck pancakes, sesame prawn toast, fried seaweed, to name a few).

To answer Aunty Lisa's questions, no we have not gone into Westminster Abbey and we are unsure if we are actually going to go inside. It's over 30 pounds to get in and not being religious we don't know if it would be worth it. The tours were closed when we were there yesterday, so we just took tons of pictures outside of it. At this point we have walked through almost every garden in Central London which has been really nice. They're great for cutting across areas in order to get to different destinations and great places to sit down and rest (and watch squirrels and other weird birds that they have inside). The State Rooms at Buckingham Palace are only open in the summer months, so we were not able to go into those either.

It is midnight here so we are going to bed now!

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