Trip to Europe and beyond: Day 15: pussycat pussycat where have you been?

We've been to London to visit the queen!

Today we toured around London seeing the sights. We got on a hop-on hop-off bus and were informed that there would be traffic problems because the queen was in town. It was the opening of parliament. Anyway we rode the bus for a while and it was very slow so we got off and walked. We picked up tickets for the theater tonight and were heading towards Buckingham palace to see the changing of the guard. Unfortunately it was cancelled though we got to see the queen instead. We ran into a roadblock with a whole pile of guards and police. We stuck around and watched the action. It was the opening of parliament.

On the open top bus tour

The British Museum

Showing some British Pride

Piccadilly

Statue of Eros

In a phone both - It was pretty gross

Heading to the Mall

Brass Band playing in preparation for the Queen

Piggy dressed up for the occastion

For a video of the first lot of royal cars click here

The second procession

Charles and Camilla heading off

Charles and Camilla

Queenie (sorry about the dodgy cameraing at the end)

Queenie and Phillip

Piggy got a bit scared by all the horses

But snuggled up to the Queens Mum

Then we moved on to the castle, checking out the Australia gate and listening to a 54 gun salute.

Haidee and Piggy with the Australia Gate in the background.

The Canada Gate

Buckingham Palace

Piggy was excited

Australia Gate

The parkland around the castle was nice

Piggy scaling 'Big Ben'

House of Parlament

From there we went to the London Eye, and the 4D experience. That was a 5min 3D movie about the Eye including smoke machine, real bubbles and light effects.

The glasses were bulky

The Eye

'Duck Face'

The pod that left before us

Our little pod

We had a cruise down the river to the Tower of London and walked back (in the rain) to the millennium bridge seeing lots of cool stuff along the way.

On the way we stopped into the church next to Westminster Abbey (it cost £18 each to get into the Abbey).

St Margret's Church

Westminster Abbey bells

The Eye from the River

Cleopatra's Needle

Lambeth Bridge with the Dome of St Mary's in the background

The foundations for a disused railway bridge

Millennium Footbridge with St Mary's Dome

Shakespeare's Globe

The 'Golden Hinde II' A replica of Sir Francis Drake's ship. In this ship, he was the first Briton to sail around the world

The 'Walkie Talkie'

'London Bridge'

Monument to the Great Fire

The Shard (it will be a thing soon)

Tower Bridge and the cruise ship 'Berlin'

Tower of London

The Tower of London

The Gerkin

We got off at the Tower of London and walked in the rain all the way back to the millennium bridge. Along the way we crossed the tower bridge and saw lots of great things along the way. We even found Fleet Street and a barber shop there.

The River Thames

The 'City of London' Crest

'I like big butts and I cannot lie'

Cool fountain

The Southwark Cathedral

Fleet Street

We got back on a bus to try to squeeze in a few more sights before the theater. The bus we were on announced that due to delays they wouldn't be passing the marble arch. So we got off to change to the blue line to see the royal Albert hall. We waited and waited but the bus never came. So we ended up walking for over an hour to get back to the hotel. Luckily we found a boost juice on the way.

A piece of the old Roman city wall

Piccadilly

Post Box

A strange Sculpture in Barkley Square

Zara

We got back to the hotel, changed quickly and practically ran to the theater. We got there with 7 mins to spare. The Lion King was great. The staging and choreography was amazing. What we weren't impressed with was the poor theater etiquette of the West End goers. The tickets said semi-formal yet people were wearing hoodie and jeans, people were late, loud and left during the bows. Despite all that we had a great time and caught a rickshaw home.