Gotta get out of this country!

---

It was a pretty early wake up this morning as we had a full day of intense sightseeing to do. We re-boarded our hop on/hop off bus to make our way to Buckingham Palace, the Queen of England's residence. We watched the changing of the guards along with what seemed like a million other people. It was pretty boring and not very eventful. Afterwards everyone else wanted to take a tour of the inside of the palace. It wasn't my cup of tea, but I figured what the heck. Tours were available to the general public when the queen was not in residence. Lucky for us, she was out of town today. Once we bought our tickets and had an assigned time, Amy's stomach problems set in and she needed to quickly find a bathroom. While Patrice, Clay, and Suzanne went over to the palace to line up for our tour, I waited behind for Mar and Amy to find a bathroom. They took forever and while I was waiting I found out that if we didn't make it at our scheduled time, we would forfeit our tickets. When I finally found them, we had only 3 minutes to spare...We booked it as fast as we could around thousands of tourists trying to make it on time to our palace tour. Once we got there, we realized that we rushed for nothing as they kept allowing others in for quite awhile after we arrived. It was turning out to be a very warm afternoon and after that run I was now profusely sweating, thanks Amy. The tour of the palace was at your own pace with an audio guide. We kept going from room to room. At first it was pretty cool just being inside this palace with all of its history and grandeur. Eventually, it just got a bit monotonous and boring and I went ahead of everyone else and waited outside for them to finish.

Afterwards, we checked out the gift shop and chatted a bit with a local woman and discussed the differences between our accents. We walked through the palace grounds trying to find an exit and get some lunch. After walking a bit, we settled on the Duke of York Restaurant and Pub. I had fish and chips again and some local beer. Once again, my wallet took a beating with this meal. I cannot wait to leave the UK, not that I don't like it here but it is doing quite a number on my cash-flow. After lunch, we decided to check out the London-Eye which is this huge ferris wheel along the river Thames. Once again, I dished out an exorbitant amount of money but it turned out to be pretty cool and one of my highlights of London. Each pod could carry probably 20 people and gave really awesome views of the London skyline. It took about 30 minutes for each pod to go all the way around. After the London Eye, we decided to take our free River Cruise. We were all wondering what kind of boat it was going to be but since it was free we all pretty much expected the boat to be fairly simple. Once on board we headed straight for the bar where I had 2 vodka tonics and some Baileys. The cruise was very relaxing and we had a refreshing breeze flowing. Our moods were pumped and we were all in a good mood acting silly and stupid. We had some good views of the City Hall, St. Paul's Cathedral, and the HMS Belfast.

The river cruise ended at the Tower of London which we decided to explore next. The Tower of London was used as a prison back many centuries ago and is supposed to be one of the most haunted places in the world. Unfortunately, once we arrived it was too late to check out and we had to be content with just looking at it from the outside. We hung around the outside still acting silly and reenacting decapitation and torture skits. The girls wanted to check out Harrod's department store next. Harrod's is a world famous department store known for their luxurious and expensive items. As it was getting quite late in the evening, we decided to catch the Underground to Harrod's before they closed. We got to Harrods with only 15 minutes before closing time. Again, not my cup of tea but I've never been here before so I decided to check it out. I went off on my own and did a quick walk through and nothing quite caught my interest. It was mostly overpriced, high-end products that I would never buy anyways. I explored the grocery section which was pretty interesting with all of the exotic and pertentious food items. After about 20 minutes, I had enough and decided to wait for the others outside. With most of the major tourist sights closed for the evening, we decided to just walk around and do some souvenir shopping. We had dinner at a place called Garfunkels which seemed like a British version of Denny's. At dinner, we all discussed how expensive this country is and how even though it is only day 2 of the trip, we all feel like we've been gone for awhile. Even though we had good intentions of going out tonight, we were all pretty exhausted and just went back to the hotel. All in all it was a very productive day with as much sightseeing as you can cram into one day!!!!

---

Photos

Patrice in the morning
Will someone get this girl out of bed...We got sightseeing to do

Buckingham Palace
Changing of the Guards

The Houses of Parliament
Seen from the London Eye

Suzanne and I
Aboard the London Eye