The London Bridge Is Not The Tower Bridge

I arrived in London on Wednesday night.  I was a bit nervous travelling by myself as I haven't travelled without Travers in a long time. Thankfully, it was an easy flight from Geneva and I was now in an English speaking country. Yay!  So I was able to easily navigate through the tube and made it to the Intercontinental Hotel where Travers had been staying for the past 3 days for work.  After getting settled in, I had a nice nights sleep and woke up well rested on Thursday morning to go exploring!

I think I walked more than any person should walk in a 3 day span. My feet ached. My back ached. I felt like an old woman and it reminded me that my 30th birthday is coming up. Ugh. Anyway, I left the hotel and walked through Green Park, which, to my amazement, was extremely green. I'm not kidding actually. It was a very green park. You could tell the grass was well taken care of and the trees nicely trimmed.  I wish I could have stayed longer there, but the Buckingham Palace and St. James's Park were calling my name.

I had about an hour before the changing of the guards, so I walked through St. James's Park, which has more ducks, geese, swans, and squirrels than I have ever seen.  I took a path along the large pond and took way too many photos of all the animals, but they were all so pretty and peaceful looking. My favorite is the goose. We have a few here in Geneva, but there in St. James's Park there must have been hundreds!

Back at the Buckingham Palace, thousands of people waited at the gates and around the fountain. The Palace itself is not an extremely pretty building, but the gates are beautiful, and the fountain out front of it is beautiful. I walked around the fountain and along the gates and found a spot right along the main gate with only one person standing between me and the gates. It was a prime spot for viewing the guards!  Little did I know that I would be standing there for about an hour and half!  I'm not sure how those guards do it. I had to shift and fidget and move in my spot. How do they stand so still for such long periods of time?  But they do it, and I guess every day they get to move around and perform the changing of the guards. It was so fun to see them walk and move and switch places. My favorite part are the black furry hats they wear.

The show ended around lunchtime, so I decided to take the tube out towards Portobello Road near Kensington and find something to eat. Portobello is known for its antique shops and on Saturdays it turns into a street market where booths line the streets and hundreds of people go there to shop.  I got a bite to eat and strolled the several blocks long of Portobello Road for the next couple hours.

After resting at the hotel for an hour, I met Travers in Covent Garden. We had a couple of pints at a bar called The Nag's Head and got dinner at a mexican restaurant called Cantina Laredo. Yumm! 

Then we took a long walk through Trafalgar Square, and down towards the river Thames. We strolled along the north bank down to Westminster Bridge to see Big Ben, The House of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey. We then strolled past St. James's Park and Green Park to end up back at the hotel.

I was exhausted from the day of walking and site seeing, but knew I was going to do it all again the next day and I couldn't wait!

To be continued...