Our First Free Day in London

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Saturday was our first free day in London. Although many of us wanted to see the same attractions, we split up into multiple smaller groups. Each group had very different experiences at places such as the London Eye, the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, and Harrodsburg for shopping.

The London Eye is a giant ferris wheel on the river Thames. It over looks most of the city and gives a very nice view of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. One of the first things some of us did on this lovely morning was stand in line for two and a half hours to get onto the London Eye. It was well worth the wait however and riding it gave us a spectacular view of the city.

The Tower of London was another popular stop. If you follow one of the Yeoman Warders (popularly known as 'Beefeaters'😉, you learn much about the bloody history of the towers and about when and why each was constructed. Also, the Crown Jewels are safely kept in the tower visible for you to look at but not take pictures of unfortunately. Rachel found the Royal Beasts section to be quite interesting, explaining how many different animals were given as gifts to the King or Queen. There were some problems with this however. They didn't know how to care for the animals or how to feed them, and many of them were dangerous like lions, bears, and monkeys which attacked people.

Another stop on the trip was Buckingham Palace. The Palace is a very hopping place right now in preparation for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. We witnessed the changing of the guard and took pictures next to the mounted guards in front of St. James's Park.

After the Palace we rode the bus around London, no small feat as it was over a 3 hour trip. The weather here is beautiful. Right now it is sunny and 80 degrees outside without a cloud in the sky. Evidently the week before we got here was cold and rainy. So we just walked around and enjoyed the weather. Eventually we came to Harrods which is a famous department store.....a very expensive one too. Then we took one last bus ride back to our hostel. Andrew however got left behind but fortunately found a lovely bus driver interested in supercars who showed him a nice part of town with many expensive cars, then got dropped off at the hostel.



By The Mr. Andrew Moore And The Miss Rachel Clor
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