London England

Well the next week we took a train ride to the British Isle and visited London. A bit of a contrast from Paris the week before. We stayed downtown in the Waterloo area. London is more industrial and "city" like compared to Paris but still has its own style. The first day we did the Griswald thing and saw Big Ben and Parliament. After walking by there we went into Westminster Abby. It was pretty cool to see all of the crypts and monuments to famous Britons. The coronation chair was really cool and the Knights room. After that we headed towards Trafalgar Square and then headed to a pub for dinner. The next day we started off our day with a decker-decker bus (what Tori calls double decker buses) tour of the city. We then headed to Buckingham Palace and tried to have tea with Elizabeth. She had locked the gate and the guards didn't have our names on the entry list so we missed our afternoon tea with the queen. We did get to see Queen Victoria's statue and boy was Tori in heaven. After that we went on the London Eye and enjoyed the sights from a few hundred feet up. We then rode down the Thames to the Tower Bridge and over towards the Tower of London. The last day that we were there we headed to the Baden-Powell House and Natural History Museum. We had a good time at the museum seeing the dinosaurs and creepy crawly things. On our way back we got to see the mounted guards for the Queen. The girls loved seeing the military horse and cavalrymen in their uniforms. The horses were very well mannered and the one guard was a good sport "talking" with us (their not supposed to but he liked talking with us, must be the accent). We then boarded the bullet train back to Belgium and returned to home.