Day Eight - The London Blitz Part Two

After Westminster, we headed across the street to the Central Methodist Building which serves as the headquarters for British Methodism. There's a great cafe in their basement where we had lunch before receiving a tour of the building. At the end of the tour, they let us out onto the little balcony which overlooks the Abbey's square. They rented this space to the BBC for their coverage of the latest royal wedding.

Next stop was Buckingham Palace. And on our walk there we passed the beautiful gardens of St. James' Park. When we arrived outside the palace, we realized something was going on - there were thousands of people dressed up in their finery all around and lining up outside the palace. Turns out it was the first of the Queen's summer garden parties! While the Palace was closed, our pass allowed us to get into the Royal Mews (stables) and so we walked past all of the people in line and were able to check out all of the great outfits and hats.

Turns out that the Mews holds more than just horses. It's also where all of the carriages and coaches are kept as well as the Queen's cars. We saw the bridal coach that took Kate Middleton to the royal wedding, the coach that William and Kate left the wedding in, as well as the gold coronation coach.

We walked back to the Westminster area and got our tickets for the London Eye. This was the one attraction for the day not covered by our pass and it cost 18 pounds per person. There are 32 glass gondolas that hold about 20-25 people each. The ride is one revolution on the wheel, but because the wheel moves so slowly, the ride takes about 30 minutes. Brett confessed on the ride he had been skeptical of the price for a ferris wheel but was so glad we had done it because it was a great experience with fabulous views. So glad we did this one - everyone loved it!

After disembarking from the Eye, we lined up to take a cruise down the Thames. We arrived at the dock at 6:00pm - 45 minutes ahead of schedule for the day and so we caught and earlier boat back to the Tower Hill area. Our guide was a young man who was absolutely hilarious to listen to and it was so relaxing to ride on the boat and take in the views around us on the Thames.

When we got out at Tower Hill, we took the tube back to the St. Paul's area and found Gourmet Burger Kitchen for dinner. Great food! Daryl had the bacon cheesburger and Debbie had a chorizo (spicy sausage and sweet potato).

We had our final wrapup meeting with the Fannins on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral and then headed out to find a pub. We wanted to try the IceBar, so we took the tube to Picadilly Circus and started walking there. Unfortunately, they were booked up for the next couple of hours so we walked up to Trafalgar Square (with its lions, fountain, Olympic countdown clock) and found a place there. It was way more upscale, a bar really, but it worked in a pinch. The group toasted Debbie and Brett for a job well done on our London Blitz! We were all exhausted and got some bad directions from a server as we headed for the tube. By the time we rode the tube and switched to the train, we got back to the hotel at 11:45pm - 15 minutes before our subway cards expired and 16 hours and 15 minutes after we had left that morning!

It took us a while to pack and get showers. We ended up in bed at 1:45 and caught a short nap before our wake up call of 4:15am for our ride back to the airport.