Day Two in London

At Least it's not Raining today…Yet!

So after a nice relaxing evening with friends and a good night's sleep it was time to catch a train from the south suburbs of London back into the city center.

We got off again at Charing Cross station again, mainly because it's just so easy to get to everything worth seeing (and it's Carol and Norm's stop too). We stopped for a nice breakfast at a little local eatery down one of the small alleyways they call streets here. You couldn't get a car down it if you tried, but they call it a street anyway. We had our breakfast with Norm before he went to work and went about our merry way!

Today we traveled around London using "The Tube" or "The Underground" as they call it here, to me it looked a lot like a Subway, like those in New York City. They do have some silly names for things here, like an Elevator is called "The Lift", cigarettes are "Fags", a trashcan in called a "Dustbin" and a lot of other silly names for things.

On our day out today we didn't have as much time as yesterday, so we were only able to see a few things before we had to catch a train. Since it was a nice day out we walked around a little more, passing by places we had already been to. Since it was nice out today the horses were standing outside their shelters, enjoying the nice warm sunshine while it lasted.

Even the humans seemed a little happier to be standing outside today, even if they weren't allowed to move around much.

By this time in the trip I was getting a little homesick and decided to call home. I got into one of these telephone booths alright, made my call, and promptly got stuck in the door on the way out of it. Gary thought this was hilarious and started to giggle almost uncontrollably, and after a few minutes he calmed down enough to hear me yelling at him to get me unstuck! He finally quit laughing enough to prize me out of the door and resume walking.

On our way to the next stop we passed by Parliment's east tower (Big Ben) again, and Gary found a much better place to take pictures of it. So we stoppe for a few minutes to take a few pictures.

So after a few good shots like this one we walked a few hundred feet more and we were at our next stop…Westminister Abbey.

This is another really big church, and this one is special because this is where all the Monarchs (not the butterflies) go for religious ceremonies, like Weddings and funerals. It's also where there are a lot of really important and famous people are buried, including some of the Monarchy.

It may be a church, but it also has a part that looks a lot like a castle. For several hundred years the church was almost as powerful as the government or Monarchy (some people said it was more powerful), and was very important.

It's a really big building, and I guessed if the bigger the building was, the more important the people inside were. Since all I was used to was our little house in the Rockies, these places seemed gigantic to me, so they must be a lot more important than just little 'ol stuffed me! Gary said that was completely and utterly wrong, and that they were compensating for a lack elsewhere (I really didn't understand this…), and that I was much more important to him than any of these silly humans!

No matter… it was still a very pretty building to look at, and I thought it was almost like a piece of art. Gary said that it really was a piece of artwork, something called "Architecture". Whatever the call it I still think it's very pretty. It's just a bummer we once again don't have the time or money to get inside.

So we just wandered around outside again, and Gary seemed to be happy enough to just take some pictures of it.

He found lots of good places to take pictures from too.

So we finished up taking pictures and Gary said that we needed to get moving to see the next thing in time. So we started walking again to go back to Buckingham palace to see the "Changing of the Guard".

So we walked back through the park, looking at all the nice tasty fish swimming around in the lake! Before I could even ask though, Gary said not to get any Ideas about jumping in after them for a quick mid-morning snack!

Apparently the guards standing outside the palace get replaced by new guards all the time. I guess this is so they don't fall asleep at their places. Gary said that the changing of the guard was another of these special "ceremonies" that the still have for the family of Monarchs (extremely silly humans). They have a bunch of guards dressed up nice march around a bit and take each other's place. They do this very precisely and even have a marching band play music for them while they do this.

By the time we got there it was a little too late…since it was a nice day and not raining all of the other tourists were already there (some for several hours) waiting to see it. So we weren't able to get even close to it, so it was time to give up, go back to get our bags from Norm, and catch our train to go see some more friends in Gillingham.
That's it for now…keep checking back and we'll finish this story soon!