London

As I mentioned in my quick post from abroad, we saw a lot in two days!  I will spare you the pictures of buildings (i.e.-Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey) and stick to ones with people in them.  As my mom says, "scenery pictures get really boring really quickly-put people in them!".

Mom and me in front of Buckingham Palace (the other six got to see the Queen!  I left the tripped early, planned, and missed it.)

Me, Cayce, Lindsay, Erin (Eilene) in front of Buckingham Palace.  From here forward, the four of us will just be captioned as "cousins"

I very quickly decided that on my next trip to the UK in the winter I will not focus on what shirts to bring.  As you will notice, the only way to really change up what you are wearing is to find cute shoes and different color scarves (to go with the jacket you constantly have on)...more on this later!

Sting's house

The necessary phone booth shot

Our first pub visited.  Fish and Chips, Strongbow and Guinness!

Cousins in front of Tower Bridge

Cynthia, Mom, and Toni (mom's)-Tower Bridge

The pictures at Tower Bridge were taken after the Ceremony of the Keys.  This is the locking of the Tower of London that has happened every night, without fail, for 600 years!  It was a very neat experience (although VERY cold-lesson learned...more clothes at night).

Just in case you needed a quick refresher on what has happened so far:

5:30am Friday-awake in SF getting ready to head to the airport

Flight to New York

11:45pm Friday-Flight to London

Saturday am-arrive in London

Saturday-site see all day

Saturday night-pub, tower of London

Saturday late night-FINALLY get in bed (Cayce actually shed a tear it felt so good to lay down)

Sunday-up for a 2.5 hour walking tour of London.  Our guide was great and we got to see pretty much all of the London highlights with great stories to go along with them.  I wish I had a brain that stored historic information better!

Then it was off to see the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London (we were tube experts at this point).  WOW!  What a spectacle.  I am pretty sure when Prince William proposes to Kate there will be no shortage of rocks to choose from!  The Crown includes many jewels: 2,868 diamonds, 273 pearls, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, and five rubies. Among the stones are several famous ones, including the Black Prince's Ruby and the Cullinan II diamond, also known as the Lesser Star of Africa.  The Cullinan was cut from a 3,106 ct. diamond down to 530 ct.  What a site that was!

After another walking tour that night we were ready to head to Scotland on Monday morning via train.  Cayce and I decided we had had enough of the tube and lugging around heavy luggage so we were going to cab it (against Toni's advice).  We arrived at 9am for a 10am train.  Enjoyed coffee, the paper, etc...  As 9:45 rolled around we were wondering where the rest of the ladies were.  Well, they came running in moments before the train pulled away!  Cayce and I were particularly proud of ourselves and not questioned again on the matter of cab v. train.

King's Cross.  Unfortunately I didn't get to see anyone knock themselves out running at platform 9 and 3/4!

Next post-Scotland.  Sorry if there are any typos, I am not proofreading!