England, Day 3

We woke up to another rainy day. Surprise, surprise! After breakfast, we went to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard. Between getting off the Underground at Westminster and the Palace, we walked through St. James’s Park, which was beautiful… lots of flower beds and a big pond…. And lots of pigeons.

Once we were out of the park, we saw and heard the Beefeaters playing music… Star Wars and music from the Lion King. Go figure.

At the Palace, the actual Changing of the Guard was awesome. There were a ton of people there, so it was kind of hard to see… plus, it was raining. Brooke and I ended up standing up on rails just to see over the crowd.

There were so many people to see the Changing of the Guard!

After Buckingham Palace, we decided to visit the Tower of London. While going back through St. James’s Park, we noticed that the path we were on was in memory of Princess Diana.

After a fish and chips lunch, Brooke and I found the Tower while Elaine went to see about theatre tickets for tonight (!!). Talk about impressive! This fortress has had many functions over the centuries, but now, it is used as an armory and houses the crown jewels and other relics.

We decided to check out the crown jewels first. The line to get into the building where they are kept was really long, but luckily it didn’t rain too hard. Once inside, I took a picture and was told to put my camera away, but… I just kept it hidden and tried my best to take a picture of one of the crowns. Kind of blurry, but a picture just the same! I also got a picture of some scepters and a heralding trumpet.

There was a really impressive display of royal armor inside the White Tower. It had centuries’ worth of armor, as well as displays of the different kings’ armors.

After touring the Tower, we made our way back to the Lancaster Gate Hotel. Elaine was already back, and she told us that she found tickets for tonight’s performance of Legally Blonde: The Musical! That was really exciting… you just can’t beat shows in London! We had some tea and snacks and then headed to the Savoy Theatre.

The show was absolutely hysterical… we had such a great time! We ended up having a really late dinner at an Italian place right down the street from the theatre, and got back to the hotel after midnight. Once again, I’m exhausted. Hopefully this post will be up soon! More tomorrow… the plan as of right now is to tour the Globe Theatre, which would be amazing.

Good night!
Annie