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.......
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