HALF THE WORLD: London Day 6 and 7

Day 6 :- We managed to get to the Tower of London this morning and
because we were good girls and got there early there wasn't a line up or
crowd to get to the Jewell house and the Crown Jewells. So after
admiring them we then toured the rest of the complex at a leisurely
pace. Walked up lots of towers, across bridges and saw armour and ravens
and stuff! Katie was still not 100% healthy and I was still a little
under the weather so after having some refreshments we ventured to
Oxford St (again) and Katie finally got her track pants and sloppy joe
in preparation for the 'sunny' weather of the next 3 months for her :)
We returned to the hotel for a nanna nap in preparation for our Lion
King performance that night. The sun had even shone a few times that
day, so it was nice to see it for a change. The Lion King was one
musical we hadn't seen before and we were pretty thrilled to have
watched it in London, it was great .........can now tick "West End show"
off the list..........
Day 7 :- Today we woke up feeling a bit better, so while the aches have
basically gone we now have a cough and occasional headache, never mind.
Katie's flatmate and travel companion for the next part of her adventure
(Kayla) has now arrived in England and joined us today for our sightseeing.
First up early was a "Royal Day Out" at Buckingham Palace, this
included a tour of the Queen's Gallery ( was displaying Dutch artists),
a tour of the Royal Mews and then followed by a tour of some of the palace.
The gallery wasn't very exciting, so we got through that and headed to
the Mews where we saw some coaches, a rolls royce and 4 of the Queen's
horses who had very nice stalls! Next up we queued to get into the
palace, the line moved pretty quickly as it was about 40 mins to the
changing of the guard and most folks stayed outside the fence to watch
that . The tour went through the throne room and other impressive rooms
and also displayed Kate's wedding dress and cake (today was the opening
day of the Palace for the season and so also the 1st day Kate's dress
was on display). The cake was pretty impressive, and the dress had a
tiny waist! We then had morning tea in the palace gardens cafe before
heading back to the hotel via the park to see if we could show Kayla a
squirrel. Even though the park was packed we managed to find one for
her, yay.
Next stop was a trip to the London Dungeon, which was a "tour" of about
2 hours through a "haunted house" type of set up, visiting different
bits of history, like Jack the Ripper, The Traitor's gate, Bloody Mary,
torture chamber etc. It was dark and had a couple of rides and we
totally enjoyed it, some days the queues can be over 90 mins but we got
through fairly quickly, less than 20 mins queue time...............
As Shakespeare's globe theatre was only about a 15 min walk away we
thought we would check it out, we only saw the outside and continued on
walking to the Tate. (modern art)
Whilst Katie and I are fairly museumed out after 2 months, Kayla would
have happily spent all day there. We did visit all 5 floors and see a
bit, and I could even name one artist when I saw a painting (Pollock,
and yes most of you would have too..............but still, being art
illiterate I felt good)
Made our way back to the hotel and then went and had Italian for dinner
and now we are stuffed and tired and Katie and Kayla fly out to Ireland
tomorrow for the start of their big adventure.............Katie and I
managed 2 months together without a problem but I'm sure she's ready to
have some fun with her young folks tours (Contiki and others) !!
I have a day and a half in London alone, with quite a bit of that time
used in trying to pack all my stuff I imagine...............but am
planning on visiting the British Museum to finally see all the stuff
that was stolen from the Parthenon and elsewhere we visited on the cruise :)