Oiye London! Day 2 Thursday

We both slept until about 10am local (6am Eastern) which means we didn't hit the city until almost noon- my alarms had gone off all morning to no avail. We took off to the London visitor’s center for our passes and tickets. We got a one way pass on the tube for 4£ which in comparison to our 8£ all day pass seemed a bit ridiculous but we were on the way to pick up our 3day passes that let us ride any train, bus, or public transport we wanted for free.

They were quite helpful at the office - she gave us all sorts of guides and books of attractions

that we had free passes to. We stopped at a little 'gastro-pub' is what I think they call them. Seat yourself order at the bar kind of place. I got a steak and ale pie, mashed potatoes, and peas, peter had sausages and mash (not called bangers I guess) - I feel like a lot of the slang was toned down in the city. We kept expecting other words although a few funny signs are:

"Mind the Gap"

Way out = exit
Give way = yield
Litter/Rubbish = trash
And all their signs are of the man running- not walking to wherever (bathroom/exit...)

We caught the tube to Trafalgar square after lunch.

Saw a "magician" attempt magic to

entertain some school children but we got bored went inside national gallery- saw Van Gogh, Rembrandt, etc although we weren't

allowed to take pictures I didn't

know that for the first few rooms so of course I have a fe

w snapshots. We then left and walked all the way down

the street through the

federal district toward

parliament. Peter was videoing and I was taking pictures and I got stopped by a copper/bobby/police and asked "do you mind if I ask what you're taking pictures of?" And when I answered "buildings" he was less than enthused...I eventually said "architecture" because it sounded more legitimate and he explained I was taking pictures of the war room(their Congressional building) at odd angles and just wanted to be sure I wasn't taking pictures of

CCTV(all security is called that here). After that we finally made it down to

Big Ben (the name of just the bell actually not the building) and parliament - we didn't realize Westminster Abby was right there or we would’ve gone then (Westminster was our elusive white unicorn-we never got to go inside) crossed the bridge over to the London eye to see it and to look for drinks and bathroom and to cross the Westminster bridge and take better pictures/video. We walked back toward parliament to catch the Westminster tube over to the natural history museum.

We walked back toward parliament to catch the Westminster tube over to South Kensington tube for the Natural History Museum and Hyde park. Natural history museum around 430 and they closed at 530 so we had a good hour to look around – dinosaur in the main lobby – skeletons of mammoth ancestors, whales, bugs…etc. We then headed out to Hyde park since it wasn’t quite dusk. On the way we saw a very angry brit – probably skipped a few doses of anti-depressants or something screaming “F-off “to all the minorities he passed then when they responded he retorted with “I’m not talking to you – leave me alone!” quite ridiculous(Peter had a video - I'll see if we can't post it to youtube). We walked for a while and finally figured out where we were in the park and ran across the park down to Kensington palace and

court yard. It was pretty dark by the time we got done with that so we tubed back to Trafalgar square and ate at a place called Gandolpho’s(Galdolphino's) – walked around Piccadilly at night saw the bagpipe player(video) tons of people out celebrating St. Patty's and stopped in a shop or two just to see what it was all about. Walked back over the Big Ben for a few more pictures. Hit the tube after and the Picadilly line was backed up from some fire so we hopped trains and headed north. Headed back probably around 11 as usual and got in to Edgeware around midnight saw a few Brits relieve themselves as it were on the side of the building – then got a minicab to the 2nd hotel barrier (our nightly routine).