Yesterday, we braved the open air upper deck of the London tour bus, rode across the Tower Bridge, alighted at Trafalgar Square to catch a bit of the New Years’ Day parade, people-watched in Covent Gardens and found Leicester Square. A grey, rainy day… but it didn’t dampen our spirits – we wanted to see how waterproof our jackets were anyway! A lot of walking and travelling on the tube, but we got our bearings in this exciting city. Too many tourists around…. oh, well…. you know what I mean.
Today, we rushed back to Leicester Square to purchase some discounted theatre tickets and ended up with “We Will Rock You” tickets for tonight, which we’ve just arrived home from… amazing!! Absolutely loved the show and would recommend it to everyone – you don’t have to be a Queen fan either.
We saw sunshine for the first time today, but this meant that the temperature dropped steeply! It was icy! We still braved the open upper deck of the bus for the best photo ops and the city looked very different in the sunshine! We did the tour of the Tower of London which has a very gruesome history. The beefeater retold many of the stories on our tour with great theatrics and wit. It was very entertaining and interesting.
As there is high winds, heavy rain and even hail forecast tomorrow, we tried to squeeze as much into today as we could and we covered quite a bit. We also did a short boat trip on the Thames that gave us a different perspective of the city. A close-up of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament were next on the agenda, followed by a tour of Westminster Abbey – amazing to think of the last little wedding that took place right where we were standing.
St James Park (with the ducks and the squirrels) followed a short respite from the cold in a little pub for internal reinforcements. It was late afternoon by the time we walked to Buckingham Palace and watched the poor guards attempting to keep their circulation going by stamping their feet and marching a few metres up and down while guarding their charge, who seemed to be in the lounge watching ‘Days of Our Lives’ on the tele. There was only one light on in the palace and this was my interpretation anyway!
We found a little Indonesian restaurant in Soho, had a quick meal and made our way to the Dominion Theatre for “We Will Rock You”. Big day – hope for a sleep-in tomorrow.
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