Thursday, November 9th

We woke up at the horrid hour of 4:30am so that we could make it to the airport in time. I hate waking up this early and apparently so do other since a walk that would normally take up 20 minutes took us 10. But, we got into London Standsted airport at 10am and waited for our friend, Justin, to fly in from Dublin before heading into London. It took us a little over an hour to travel what felt like 40 miles. It seemed like everyone was driving, even though people actually have to pay a fine for driving in the city. Cameras take pictures of people's license plates as they enter the city and are charged £10 and if its not paid until midnight, it goes up to £50 (to try to cut down on congestion and pollution.)
We took the subway over to Westminster, and walked out of the station to Big Ben and the Parliament Buildings. We were able to have a 'picinic' lunch right outside Big Ben and Westminster Abbey too! I unfortunately do not have any great pictures of the entire Abbey, but the building was beautiful. The windows and facade are very ornate and you could probably spend a good portion of the day just looking at all the statues, windows, and general exterior of the building. We would have liked to go into the church, but there was a charge of £10. Since we only had a limited amount of time we could spend poking around, we decided to come back a different day when we could spend more time wandering through the church. We went to see London right before Rememberance Sunday, so the yard in front of the church was covered with crosses. A lot of veterans were walking through the square and through the city in suits adorned with their medals. It was beautiful. We then headed down Parliment Street. We walked past 10 Downing Street where the Prime Minister lives. Of course it was heavily gaurded, but apparently not that long ago you could walk right up Downing Street. Not anymore.
Then we went to the Horse Guards. I was excited because I wanted a picture with one of the guards that could not move at all (very touristy -- but I was okay with it.) There were 2 guards that we could see. One out front and one tucked away in the pedestrian area. Well, the guy out front was getting his picture taken by hoards of people and we would have had to wait forever for me to get a picture with him, so we ventured over to guard number 2. BIG mistake. He was tucked underneath some arches, (which did not indicate that you could not walk under.) Justin grabbed the camera, I walked under the arches, and chaos ensued. The guard stomped his foot, wielded his sword thing and yelled 'Be warned, you have entered through her Majesty's Arches.' We had no idea what it meant he meant (as again there were no signs), but we left him alone with no pictures taken. At one point in time this was the official entrance to Buckingham Palace... maybe that is why... We headed to Trafalgar Square next. You walk down the end of Parliment Street to a view of a Nelson's Column with two gorgeous fountains and the National Gallery in the background. We walked down to Buckingham Palace, which was beautiful but the gates were more impressive. After seeing all the castles and palaces around here, Buckingham seemed rather bland. But the gates were incredibly oppulent. I was disappointed that no formal guards were outside the huge baricades, so again I could not get a picture. I didn't think that walking through the gates would be a good idea since all the security guards had uzis.
We walked over to Piccadilly Circus which is a little like Time's Square with the wall of TV advertisments, but much less neon. Piccadilly Circus has also thankfully retained much of the original facades of the buildings and is quite eleganat. After all the hiking over London, we were ready for the bus ride down to Exeter, England. Again, it took us about an hour and a half to get out of London. I cannot image ever driving in that city. Blogger stopped letting me upload pictures... so the rest are on Flickr.