Wendy and The Girl do England – Day 4

For more, check out Day 1, Day 2 or Day 3….

Day 4 is being written by The Girl…here we go!

The one thing I really wanted to do was see the changing of the guards.  So, we got up early (9am hehe) and headed to town to hopefully beat the crowd and get a good spot.  Once we got to town we waited for a bus to take us to the palace, but in turn and n very American fashion we were impatient…so we decided to walk.  Boy did we learn a lesson!  The first task of the day and we had already walked approximately 5 miles!  Sore and sweat soaked we finally made it to Buckingham Palace and needless to say, we did not beat the crowd.  We found a pretty good spot along the gate and were able to watch the whole ceremony.  There was a matching band that played music as the guards presented arms and prepared for the change.  It was a very unique experience.

From there we went on to Westminster Abbey the church where kings and queens get crowned, married, and buried.  Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take pictures inside the Abbey.  Let me just say, it is beautiful!  The architecture is unbelievable; to think this building was built 100s of years ago is sometimes hard to imagine.  If you are ever in London it is a must see.

Next we headed to Wendy’s must see, the Holocaust exhibt at the Imperial War Museum.  Wendy is a bit obsessed with the Holocaust; she reads every book there is and must see each museum whenever we travel. Again we were not able to take pictures, but it was a great exhibit.

After the war museum, I needed a bit cheering up so we headed towards the London Eye.  There we got ice cream along the Thames river and saw many street performers.  We then went to the London Aquarium.  We love animals and LOVE going to zoos/aquariums.  The London Aquarium has a HUGE shark tank and we really enjoyed that.  We honestly sat for like 30 minutes just staring at the sharks.  While we were walking around, the fire alarm sounded and we were ordered to leave the building.  Wendy and I love aquariums so much our response to the “there is an emergency please head to the nearest exit” was “BUT we’re not finished!”.  We didn’t heed the warning (who knew if the world was ending outside) and soon a staff member found us and told us there was a fire trip in another building, but it had no effect on us.  SWEET!  We were able to stay and there were NO people in there anymore!  We had the whole aquarium to ourselves.  This is definitely another must see.

It was now close to dinner time, so we found a restaurant along the river and grabbed a drink and bite to eat. The place we chose was Giraffe and it was very good! It was quite a long day, but it was full of great sites.