Ryan and Angela's European Vacation:
March 19 part two

From Buckingham Palace we walked through Saint James' park. Here's a picture.

Here's one with the Millenium Wheel in the background!

The grass was already quite green as you can see. In this part of the park there were lots of birds. Every couple minutes they would all take off en masse and fly across the park. I tried to get a nice picture of it but our tour guide was up ahead calling for us to hurry up ("Come on, mad dash, mad dash!") so I took a picture while they were still on the ground, which is far less interesting. Of course, less than half a minute after I took the picture, put away my camera, and walked away, I heard a great flurry of wings behind me signifying the availability of the shot I had wanted. You'll just have to try to imagine what it looked like.

We had lunch at a British pub named Albert's. Ang and I both had the fish and chips. I thought the fish was better than the fish I'd had the previous day, but Ang hated it. Ang didn't like the British food in general, and I can't say I was much more thrilled with it than she was. After lunch we had some free time, so we walked down the street to get a quick look at Westminster Cathedral (seen here).

In the afternoon, we took a 20 minute boat cruise on the Thames and passed under some bridges including London Bridge, which is just an ordinary looking bridge that happens to have a children's song written about it. We also went under Tower Bridge (seen here), which is much more impressive than London Bridge.

We also got to see the battleship HMS Belfast, which I don't remember much about. We didn't go on board, we just floated past it.

We left the boat at the Tower of London, probably our favorite part of the tour. We left the guide from our bus and instead followed a Yeoman Warder, or 'Beefeater' around, as he related the history of the Tower in a dynamic and humorous manner. He singled out Ang for having red hair at one point-- the Tower Ravens, in the old days, would peck away at the severed heads of executionees displayed at London Bridge, and were especially attracted to red hair, at least according to our Beefeater. Here is the Tower as seen from our boat:

Here's a picture of Ang at the Tower of London:

Here's a picture from inside the Tower of London. Note the Tower Bridge in the background, and the raven in the sky (undoubtedly feeling a strong urge to peck at my sister's head).

And here's a picture of our Beefeater. Search this guy out to lead your tour if you ever visit the Tower. He was great!

We left the tour group at Saint Paul's Cathedral, where we attended evensong. It was a very large, lovely cathedral, and the singing (by a men and boys choir) was excellent. After that we headed back to the hotel, had dinner at the same place I'd bought lunch the previous day, and called it a night.

Click here to go on to March 20