London, Wednesday

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

We got up a bit earlier today because the weather seems to be better in the mornings than afternoons. Our first stop was to go down by the Marble Arch to get on a “Hop On Hop Off” bus tour. We thought this would be a good way to see some of London since when you’re on the subway you don’t get to see any of the city.

Future advice: don’t do the bus tour if you’re in a hurry or have any sort of expectation sticking to a time schedule. Neither were really applicable to us, thankfully, but getting around on these buses is slow. Because traffic is hella bad in London. We had originally planned to rent a car for a couple of days to do some day trips, but decided to cancel that. I’m so glad we did, because driving on the wrong side of the road in traffic looked all kinds of scary today. No thank you.

We ended up only using the bus for two stops. The first was the Royal Mews of Buckingham Palace. If you’re curious as to what “mews” are, here you go: a group of stables, typically with rooms above, built round a yard or along an alley. I didn’t know either, so thanks Google! It’s basically where they house all of the horses used for the Royal family. They also store all of the carriages and cars that are used in parades, coronations, etc… Some of the carriages were incredibly ornate and detailed. They’ve been using the same one for coronations since the 1700’s! Unfortunately they only had a couple horses out for visitors to see but it was a neat stop nonetheless.

This is the Gold State Coach – it weighs 4 tons! Built in 1760.

We also went to the Queen’s Gallery, which is connected to the Mews, but that was small and quick, mostly art we weren’t interested in. We got back on the bus to head over to Kensington Palace. We stopped for lunch at Goat Tavern, which was right across the street from the palace. Chelle got a burger and I got steak and ale pie. I’ve decided between fish and chips and steak and ale pie, I could get along ok with British food.

We walked over to Kensington Palace were able to walk through some of the bedrooms and entertaining rooms, but as always, you can never see most of the places that you want to see in those old houses!