London Day Two

After spending much of the first day in the British museum, we decided to spend our second day taking in all of the iconic tourist sites. 

We began with the changing of the guards at Buckingham palace, which proceeded with much fanfare, police on horses, gaurds in traditional costumes (with swords even!) and a marching band. There were huge crowds which seems strange as this event occurs every second day. 

We then headed to the Tower of London which was so overpriced we couldn't afford to get in, but we enjoyed the view from the outside. 

There was also a World War One memorial around it, as you can see from the photo each porcelain poppy represented a death that had occurred due to the war. It was sad because there were so many and it was a very visual reminder of the toll.

London bridge was also enjoyable as we took a double decker bus over it. We then wandered for a while and took in the sites. 

The most typically London picture I was able to get. 

As everything was agglomerated in pretty much the same area, we wandered past Westminster abbey (although I really wanted to go inside it was once again too expensive) and then on a number of other awesome buildings.  

Parliament and Big Ben were next which I very much enjoyed.

We wandered past the London Eye which wasn't particularly interesting but was very large.

After taking in the typical London sites, we took a bus up to Trafalgar Square before going to find so,e lunch. Trafalgar Square was confusing transportwise with trains and buses going in all sorts of directions, to leave we ended up having to walk out of the area to get to a less confusing stop, aside from this however London transport was flawless. 

My favourite moment from that day in fact occurred in Trafalgar Square, when upon walking by the lion statues I heard a very confused sounding guy tell his friend 'See I thought they were bears but they are actually lions...' 

We simply had to have the typical tourist photo, which was harder than it looks to achieve as it was actually rather a long way from the ground. We succeeded however, and went on our quest to find a quintessentially English pub, harder than it sounds in London unless you know where to look.

We finally settled on the Black Friar which had wonderful atmosphere, and wonderful cider on tap.