Wed 12th to Thu 13th July - Touring London

Day 3 - Wednesday.  Touring London

After breakfast onto the tube, first stop a walk through Hyde Park before we hop onto the "Hop-on-hop-off" big red bus for a tour around London.

    

Then onto the bus, open topped double decker.  It travels through the city to the main tourist sites showing off the architecture along the way.

  

 

We hopped off for lunch at the Cheshire Cheese then strolled around St Paul's Cathedral.  One huge church.

 

We then cruised back on the Thames river enjoying the sun and sights.  After about 20000 steps we were starting to feel a little tired.........

But first true night on our trip we wandered to a pub/restaurant for a meal, not the best idea as most of us found we were too tired to enjoy the meal.  Then straight home to bed.

Day 4 - Thursday.  Touring London

Up and breakfast in the back yard of our lovely little flat, some "Connect 4" for the children :)

Onto the Tube again with all our luggage, heading to Liverpool station to drop our luggage off into storage for the day.  Although with the effort of bringing the large bags up all the stairs at Liverpool Underground most of us didn't see the alternate (more direct) route sign to Liverpool station via a tunnel.  So upon exiting the underground into the street Kate, Tracey and myself were all standing waiting/looking for Paul to also come out.  It took about an hour to find him waiting at the luggage drop off place... Kate very happy with him!  Once he lost us he thought the best thing to do was go direct to where we were heading anyway.

But after this short delay, we went to the "Tower of London" via Paul's old College "Imperial" for a quick reminesce.

  
View of Tower of London.                                                                  The White Tower - the centre piece.

We spent a few hours wandering the the whole fortified area, along the walls and into the towers.  It is quite amazing to think how old these buildings and walls are.  The White Tower being about 900 years old.   We wandered through the "Crown Jewels", again really amazing to see the commemorative nature of some of the artefacts.  Swords, crowns, clothes etc.  and of course many, many LARGE jewels.

Changing of the guards protecting the "Crown Jewels" housed in the building in the background.

  

Then on to some more sights...

Tower Bridge

Big Ben.

The other side of Big Ben

 

Admiralty Arch at Trafalgar Square, gateway to the Mall which leads to Buckingham Palace.

Piccadilly Circus.

And just prior to hopping on the train to Stansted for the night (early morning flight), we walked down to have a look at Buckingham Palace.

We are starting to get our head around how many tourists are about!!  As you can see from the photos.

 

  

Then on to Liverpool Station for the train to Stansted to accommodation for the night.  Dinner in their cafe/restaurant then to bed in preparation for our 3:30am wake-up.