London Day 4

Today was the day we went to visit the Queen. Or at least, the palace. It was the first time I'd been inside - this hasn't been possible for long, and is only possible in the summer when ol' Queenie's away. It's a very popular destination and I'm glad we'd bought tickets from the concierge at the hotel, because that cut our queueing time down considerably. As it was, we still had to go and do the Royal Mews first, because there wasn't a slot for the State Rooms for another hour!

The weather today was so beautiful and warm - wish we'd had that weather the day before in Oxford! :-(

We took the tube to the St James' Park stop and then walked around the front of the palace for a few shots first. It was so crowded! Would have been worse during the changing-of-the-guard ceremony though:

We then organised our tickets and walked down to the Royal Mews for a look around. They gave us little headsets with information as a sort of guided tour. The nice thing was that I could have mine in english and the mother-in-law in german, so I didn't have to translate so much.

I hadn't thought the Mews would be so interesting, and I guess they weren't really. Though there was an Australian coach, which was nice :-)

And the gold State coach and its livery (which is only used during coronations) was pretty spectacular:

After leaving the Royal Mews, it was time for our State Room viewing. Of course, we weren't allowed to take photos of the interior here - they would have been full of people anyway! It was soooooooo crowded! Seems everyone wants to see how the Queen lives. Well, the rooms of state anyway. It's not like we can see where she spends most of her time. I had not expected this to be so beautiful, but it was! If you do a google search you will see some pictures that others have taken, or that are used to advertise, just to get a general impression. Well worth seeing, in any case. One of the rooms has been set up for a state dinner reception and it's just amazing - all that gold! It's certainly most luxurious!

After the 'tour' of the state rooms, we were able to see the back of the palace and were allowed to wander about a little corner of the palace gardens, which seemed huge:

Security around the palace gardens:

After leaving the palace grounds, we were on the other end of the palace from where we wanted to be, so decided to walk around the other way, by Green park, back towards the front of the palace:











to go through St James Park with its pretty flowers and views of Westminster:

back to the underground station.

We hurried back towards the opposite side of the Thames, over the new Millenium bridge, with its gorgeous view of St Paul's:

Next stop was supposed to be The Globe, for a tour, but there was a matinee on, so there were no tours of the theatre available. So instead of that, we decided to have a nice late lunch/early dinner at a pub right on the bank of the Thames instead:

Since it was still early-ish, we decided to go back across the river, to the Inner Temple and Middle Temple, which I had recalled walking through on one of my other trips to London. Looks like most of that is no longer publicly accessible. So I took photos through the fence....ah well.

And then it was onward to the underground station to go to Picadilly circus and Soho. It was as packed as the rest of London, and as it darkened the crowds only thicker.

We had a nice little sit-down for a cup of coffee, and it took us quite a while to realise we were in the gay district. Not even the pubs that seemed to be full of men only clued us in....innocents that we are :-)

And my feet were sooooooooooo sore... but only one more day to go, before I could rest my poor little tootsies for a while. Well, a day or two at least.

Warwick Castle, Stratford-upon-Avon, the Cotswolds and Oxford

I hadn't actually wanted to do this particular tour, since it included Warwick Castle and I thought that would be too much, but they assured me the time in Oxford would be the same for both.

We had to get up even earlier on this day, because our bus was picking us up at 7.15am. Sounds good and all, but this was just a 'feeder' bus to take us to Victoria station where we had to wait until 8.30 for the tour to actually start. Also, there would be no service to take us back to our hotel after the tour. Oh well.

The day started off overcast, and the weather deteriorated from there. Very sad. Taking photos in the rain, with camera in one hand and umbrella in the other really is no fun!

Anyway: first stop, after 2 hours, was Warwick Castle. It reminded me somewhat of Windsor castle in its style and everything - though it is much smaller of course:

The castle is owned by Madame Tussauds, so the interior was furnished and had wax statues in period costume etc, which was very nice. Their wax figures are fantastically realistic - so realistic that my mother-in-law thought they were the real thing!:

It was fortunate that this place had a lot of 'inside' to explore, since it was pouring down rain outside. It would have been nice to be able to explore the outside more - the ramparts etc, but the time was limited anyway and  there was no way we were going to do that in the rain.

After about 1 1/2 hours we were bundled back on the bus and it was onwards to the Cotswolds. Not that we stopped there - we just drove past and the guide told us a little about them. We had to be in Stratford-upon-Avon for 12pm lunch, after all. I would have liked the opportunity to at least take a photo or two, but there was no point taking them out of the window with the rain on it.

So next stop was Stratford-upon-Avon, where William Shakespeare was born and later retired. Cute little town, but not that interesting:

We went straight to lunch, for which we had 45 minutes, including time required to get to the meeting place, which was the Shakespeare birthplace house. At our table was a nice american gentleman, who was travelling alone and 83 years old. I was impressed with all the traveling he's done - he'd just come from a trip to Russia and was leaving for Scotland a couple of days after this tour.

The restaurant was quite pretty inside:

The lunch consisted of fish and chips (of course), which were not very nice, being all dried out and wrinkly. Yuck. It was supposed to include ice cream and coffee for dessert, but there simply wasn't enough time to wait for it to be served, so we left immediately after eating, to backtrack a little to go and photograph the school Shakespeare had attended:

Then it was a mad rush to get to the meeting place so we could get into the Shakespeare house:

It was not that interesting, unfortunately, though the building and the gardens out the back were pretty enough:

We had a look through here, and then wandered around outside until we had to meet to get back on the bus.

Here we ran into a delay thanks to the nice gentleman at our table. He didn't turn up at the Shakespeare house and no one had seen him since lunch. Apparently he'd decided to get the ice-cream. We waited and then drove around and the tour guide went back to the restaurant etc looking for him but he was nowhere to be found.  After 20 minutes of looking in vain, the tour continued towards Oxford.

Yay Oxford! Of course it was pouring down rain, but we were finally here!!!! And it was beautiful! We were there about 2 hours altogether, and I took 100 photos. :-) Here's a few of them:

You may have noticed some of these places look familiar if you've seen the Harry Potter movies, or watched Morse or Lewis (British cop shows). I would love to go back here with several more hours, or even days to spend just wandering around - especially with better weather and fewer tourists. How I envy people who studied there!

Now it was a two hour or so trip back to London, where we were just dropped off near Hyde Park to make our own way back to our hotel. We decided to go and check out Harrods instead of going straight home. That shop is so pretty on the onside with all its tiles in the food areas and fancy decorations in the other rooms. Of course it's also way out of our price-range. The store seemed to be full of arabic people, whose league this evidently was in!

We'd thought to eat here but couldn't be bothered in the end and just went back to the hotel, with the intention of exploring this part of town the following day, after we'd done Buckingham Palace and the parks.

London Day 2

Day 2 started off early, as this was supposed to be the only nice day we get in London, according to the weather forecast I checked out before we left. Some of the day turned out nice, so it wasn't a complete lie...

First stop was Trinity Square which is some sort of memorial, opposite the Tower of London. It has quite a lovely building on one side of it:

 

Then we headed off in the general direction of St Paul's Cathedral, going down Eastcheap street, past the local Citibank building, St Magnus the Martyr church, and the Five Kings House just to mention a few:

 

and 

to finally arrive at the beautiful St Paul's Cathedral:

Even though the admission fee was a hefty 10.50 GBP, we decided to go in and look around. I can see why Queen Victoria said it was too plain and needed a bit of spiffying up! I remembered it to be fancier and more ornate on the inside. Obviously getting it mixed up with the 1000 other churches and cathedrals I've seen. I had read online somewhere that climbing to the golden gallery is a must in good weather. I went up on my own, since it's 527 steps of winding staircase - some being metal-grate vertigo-inducing steps. It was a little scary at times, but I managed to get to the top and see the gorgeous views from up there. Definitely worth the effort!!!

 

My poor mother-in-law didn't realise I was going right to the top (nor had I before I started) and so was waiting for me for quite some time, while I climbed and climbed and climbed.... But yeah: definitely worth it!

After leaving St Paul's, we wandered through the gate to Paternoster Square. This square looks a little like an italian piazza, but not very interesting. The view back towards St Paul's is nice though:

 

Our next destination was Westminster. This took us down Ludgate Hill with lots of pretty buildings along the way:

 

Until we decided to stop at The George for a beer, since it was too late for lunch and my feet were killing me after all those stairs in the cathedral:

Couldn't tarry too long though. We still had to do Westminster while the weather held! This took us past lots more beautiful churches and buildings, as well as the Savoy hotel (being renovated) and Australia House (yay!!) down Fleet Street and The Strand:

 

We continued onward until we got to Trafalgar Square with St Martin in the Fields, which is also undergoing renovation:

We only had a quick look inside, since we were on a dead-line, and as can be seen from the photo, the weather was not living up to its promise.

So we hurried down Whitehall, past the Old Admiralty Offices, the War Office and stopped off for a quick photo session with the Horse Guard and the Treasury Building (which is being used as 10 Downing Street, since that's gotten too small, apparently):

We continued ever onward til we finally got to Westminster Abbey to pay our pound of flesh, I mean 12.50 GBP entrance fee - just in time, too!:

Of course, like most other places, you're not permitted to take photos inside. Now, now, I heard that sigh of relief! No one is forcing you to look at all my pretty pictures! ;-)

After we left the Abbey, we walked past Westminster Palace and Big Ben to take some photos. Fortunately, the weather had cleared while we were inside, so the sky looks nice and blue again:

Since this is being written about a month after the event, I can't actually remember where we went for dinner. I think we went back to the place we went to the previous night....or maybe we went without. Can't remember. But we did have to have an early night because the next day was the main event (to me, at least!): a trip to Oxford!! (and a few other places, but who cares about them!).

And my feet were soooooooooo sore!