80's Pomp and Circumstance

Thursday morning we woke up and were eager to get out and about the city again. We started out by having breakfast at the Bakery Cafe right up the road from our hotel. The Europeans are big on very small breakfasts so we had croissants and hot chocolate to eat. We headed out on the Underground back to Buckingham Palace, our first stop. We watched the changing of the guards, there were so many people there and this isn't even peak season.

The inspection of the guard shack before the guards actually change


After the actual change they have a band that played. They played for about 15 - 20 minutes and we were shocked as we listened. The first song that they played Greg and I listened and thought, "Hmmmm, this sounds familiar", but we could never figure it out. Then the songs began that we did recognize. Are you ready? Are you sure your ready to read the songs that the Buckingham Palace Changing of the Guards ceremony had played? Ok, here we go:

Thriller
Eye of the Tiger
Love Lifts Us Up
Time After Time
You Give Love a Bad Name

What a riot. After we left the changing of the guards ceremony we headed to Trafalgar Square. This is a huge hot spot for filmmakers. Some of the movies that have been filmed here include 101 Dalmations, The Avengers, and 28 Days Later, along with others.

One of the large lion statues at Trafalgar Square


Popular spot for pigeons to hang out and take food from passerby's at Trafalgar Square


We walked around for a while and ended up eating at a nearby pub called The Porcupine. While Greg enjoyed the ale, the food was very greasy, typical of an English pub. After lunch we went to The Photographer's Gallery and saw some interesting pictures, to say the least, not my style of pics at all. We continued on foot around the Chinatown area and then on to Piccadilly Circus and the theater district at Leicester Square. Lots of lights and somewhat like Broadway in New York, but on a much smaller scale.

The play Equus in which Daniel Radcliff (Harry Potter) is staring in. It doesn't open until 2/27/07.
This billboard is located near Leicester Square, the theater district.


The main square at Piccadilly Circus, lots of billboards and lights.


We then walked to a nice shopping area, called Covent Garden. We had a couple of our friends, including Lisa, had told us about it so we were eager to head there. We didn't buy anything but had fun watching the street performers and just browsing in the shops.

We headed back to Earl's Court and ate dinner at Wagamama, a noodle bar. We had to get up very, very early in the morning so we went to bed early.

Valentine's Day with the Brits

After having a nice relaxing afternoon, we got up early to try to squeeze as much as possible in on our first real day in London. We grabbed a quick breakfast at our hotel, then made our way over to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guards. The only problem is that during the winter, they only do the changing of the guards every OTHER day, and of course this wasn't the day they were doing it. We were a little disappointed, but figured we'd come back the next day, so weren't too concerned.

It didn't seem too far, so we figured we would walk over to the House of Parliament On the way, we noticed a crowd of people gathering and figured we would check it out. It turned out to be the changing of the horse guard on one of the parade grounds. It was interesting to watch, but lasted a very long time.

One of the Horse Guard


After the changing was finished, we walked over to the House of Parliament where Big Ben is located. We also went by Westminster Abbey which is located in the same area. They were both nice and impressive, but we didn't spend too much time since we had so much to see. There were docks located really close to Big Ben, so we hopped on a boat and took a cruise down the Thames river over to the Tower Bridge.

Tami and me on the boat


Tower Bridge


When you get off at the docks close to Tower Bridge, you are right at the Tower of London, so we went in there next. We expected to get through it in an hour, but it's so huge and there is so much to see we stayed for like 3 or 4 hours. The highlight was seeing the Crown Jewels, but seeing the Ravens and all of the weapons and torture devices were very interesting also. They had one section where they had actors portraying what life was like during the times when the Tower was active. We talked with one of the guys for awhile and it turns out that his wife was in Woodstock Georgia, so he knew exactly where we were from..... small world.

Around 2:30, we figured that we weren't going to make it to lunch since we still had a lot to do, so we grabbed a quick snack at a little cafe at the Tower. After we left, we were starving since it was about 4:00, so we found an Italian restaurant called Brassierie that was close by and had a wonderful late lunch. After we were full again, we started out going across the Tower Bridge to South London and walked around. We eventually made it over to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and took a tour. It was fairly impressive, built in 1997 as a faithful reproduction of the original Theatre that was located really close to where the original was situated. It was built using wooden pegs rather than medal screws and even has a thatch roof.... the only one allowed in all of London since the Great Fire of 1666. They still do productions, but since it is an open air theatre, they only do them in the summer.

Looking up from the seats in the Globe Theatre



We stayed at the Globe until they shutdown, and by then we were exhausted. We had really wanted to go out for a nice meal for Valentine's Day, but since we ate lunch so late and we were so tired, we decided to go back to our hotel instead. When we got off the Tube station at our hotel, we went out a different exit than we normally did and were shocked to find a huge group of people, paparazzi and a line of Limo's. Apparently, their annual Brit Awards were that night and they were being held at Earl's Court which is right down the road from our hotel. We stayed for awhile to see if we could see anyone famous, but you could mainly just see people's backs as they got out of their limo's and posed for pictures. Besides, it was the Brit Awards, so we figured we wouldn't know many of the British celebs anyway.

Earl's Court where the Brit Awards were held.



We started to go to our room, but figured we should eat something, so we ran up the road to a little pizza place and got a small pizza and some bread sticks and took them back to our room. Paired with a bottle of wine, it wasn't that bad of a supper. However, I'm not going to push my luck and will be taking Tami to a proper Valentine's Day supper next year.......

Welcome To London

We left Atlanta on Monday, February 12, 2007, and arrived in London Tuesday morning. We made it to Earl's Court, where our hotel was located, without any problems. The hotel was not exactly what we expected but it was still pretty good. We got upgraded from just a basic room (which turned out to be so small that the two of us would not have even been able to turn around without hitting each other) to a suite, or actually a complete one bedroom apartment. It even had a full dishwasher in the kitchen and washing machine/dryer combo. It wasn't as nice as the website but was still much better than the room we should have gotten, we were very happy with that arrangement.

Since the first day was only a half day in town and we were a little tired we didn't venture out too far. We were starving since we hadn't had a real meal in over 12 hours, except for airplane food, so we stopped and ate at Zizzy's. This was a very cozy Italian restaurant where we had some wine and lunch and unwound from the travel. We then walked around Earl's Court and ended up at Holland Park. We just walked around the park for a little while, watching all of the owners and their dogs out for walks after work. On our way back down the main street I noticed a movie theater, the Odean, which happened to be playing Musc & Lyrics already. We stopped in and watched the movie before heading back to our room.

We did make a pit stop on the way back by the local grocery store and picked up some snacks for the room. We didn't eat too much that night as we had gorged ourselves at lunch. We had this awesome desert that some would die for. It was a warm belgian waffle topped with bananas, caramel, chocolate, whipped cream, and ice cream. Yummy!!!!

No pics for the day but there will be more on the following days.