London Bridge is Falling Down

We arrived in London on Wednesday. It took much longer than we expected. The train was late and then was so full that we had to stand in the connector for almost 3 hours. I finally put the children's backpacks on the floor and used them for seats for them. I was pretty angry that we had paid full fare to not be able to move our feet two inches and be crammed in the connectors between cars, like war refugees. But I felt a little better when I talked to the people who were sitting in the next connector and discovered that they had reserved, first class tickets. Thank goodness Don didn't pay the extra money for first class tickets for us.

Once we arrived in Euston Station, we had to find the correct subway line and figure out how to do tickets. It took me a while, standing in queue's for information, the route map, then again for tickets, not to mention getting through the gates once the tickets were in my hand. Along the way, my watch got stolen - ripped right off my hand with cut nuckels to boot. But I didn't discover the missing watch until much later. It's frustrating, though, not having a watch. I'm constantly pulling up my shirt sleeve and staring at my empty arm before realizing that there's nothing there.

Check-in at the hotel was 2 p.m. We were supposed to arrive around 1 and thought we'd try and check in early. By the time we changed trains a couple of times and found our way out of the tube station, then got our bearings and made our way about a mile down the road to the hotel, it was about 4:30, and we were just plain tired. We settled in, dropped off our luggage, and headed out for dinner, discovering that the person who had given us directions to the hotel from the tube had sent us the long way around, and the hotel was really only about 1/2 mile away.

Now to the good part. Don had booked a tour for us on a bus tour. The tickets were good for two days and included a free cruise of the Thames' River. We started out the day Thursday taking the tube to Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard, then hopped on our bus tour (on the second story of the open-top, of course) and did the entire loop around London to familiarize ourselves with the city. We planned to start seeing the sites first thing Friday, but we wanted to fit the cruise in on Wednesday after dark so we could see the lights of the city. We did all that, and had a wonderful time.

The highlights were Buckingham Palace. We had trouble seeing anything, although the Palace Guard band played showtunes during the whole ceremony, and that was fun. As the guards marched off through the Gate, some Spanish women who were right at the barricade called Dane up to get a front-row look. A belated officer came walking up to the gate and the bobby let him out, then turned to go back through the gate, when he saw Dane. He walked over and asked Dane if he had enjoiy