London Calling

Yeah, I know, another Clash reference.

I once read a quote about London that said when you tired of London, you’re tired of life—I have only been here just a short while but can see what he meant by it (and he wrote this a few hundred years ago if I am correct). Today (Thursday) we made the insane decision to walk down to Buckingham Palace. After this we made sure we took a cab or rode the bus for the rest of the day. But to me it was worth it to go down and see the changing of the guard. British history is really one of my favorite subjects so getting to see this historic regiment was just a great start to seeing the entire city.

We took a cab back to the hotel as Terri realized she had the wrong shoes for walking and then we took a double decker bus down to Trafalgar Square. I was a little bummed seeing that Nelson’s monument was all scaffolded but the rest of the square was really great to see. And considering that it was only one monument that was covered and there were about a million more that were just fine, I couldn’t feel too put out. We were true Texas geeks as we went to lunch at the Texas Embassy restaurant and bar. Texas actually had an embassy here during the time she was independent so it seemed the thing to do for two Texas residents. We then visited the Parliament building, Big Ben and viewed the outside of Westminster Abbey. Unfortunately we missed tour time at the Abbey but we will probably go back to see it tomorrow. We walked over to see a number of other sites including the Horse Guards Barracks, Admiralty, No. 10 Downing Street (I couldn’t get in to see Mr. Blair, pity) as well as seeing another thousand monuments. This is a dream city for a guy like me.

No journey would be complete without dropping by a pub. We ended up at The Lord Moon of the Mall where I had a couple of pints of beer that aren’t readily available in the states and surprisingly Terri took down a Guinness—that’s my wife! This pub really cornered the market on wood paneling but was just what I needed after walking around town.

We walked through a few shops and then took the No. 9 bus back to our hotel. Tomorrow, we try to get in everything else we didn’t see… better catch an early bus.