London in a day..

We were almost at the last leg of the Europe tour. We had visited Lords, gone to South Wimbledon to meet friends, put on a sad face and made it back to Kings Cross after England lost the semi final of the world cup.

Day 12 was going to be interesting.. Would the people of London bounce back or would it be a day of mourning? We were booked on an all day tour with Evans and Evans to catch the best sights of London. It was a 7AM to 5:30 PM tour...

We were up bright and early and made it to the train station. We had to go to Victoria terminal to catch the bus tour. The kids raced ahead to do the ticket entries (we would just do the credit card sliding at the end) and they had checked out local London maps and they really enjoyed figuring out the London Underground. 

The previous post on this series is here..

We made it to the bus stop where all Evans tours left and found breakfast there. Then we were off with a bus full of folks and a very chatty tour guide. She was nice and made sure she crammed an all day tour with all the jokes in her script. It was almost like she was auditioning for a late night talk show job with us. 

We sat at the back of the bus with a Canadian mom and her two daughters who were the same age as Jr. and the Little one. This was good for us as we took family pictures for each other throughout the tour. 

The first stop was the cathedral. It was very cold and we did not want to hang out. It was also early in the morning. So we spent little time there and went to our next stop, the Palace to see the change of guard.

After so much hype for this by the tour guide, we were almost there when a Palace employee who recognized our guide gave her some information in private. She turned to us and apologized. Apparently the guards will not be there that morning as last minute security changes had been made. DJT was visiting London and it was a surprise. We were all upset and there were lot of jokes from the group. We made it to the Palace, took pictures, then walked back along a park. 

There was still one hope. There was a horse guard change that we could catch if we all walked fast enough. Walk we did and were not disappointed! 

Then it was time to board the bus again and go to the St. Pauls cathedral. We went through it but I really wanted to go to the whispering dome. During an earlier visit to London 20 years ago, I had been up to the whispering dome and it was interesting.. Still remember trying out the whisper thing with my friends who kept experimenting multiple times till the whisper came back with the exact message sent out. (note to self, should find out what Weeshie is up to these days!)

We were however told that there was a narrow staircase and we had only 20 minutes to go back so there would be no climbing up. I tried to tell the lady that the same thing had happened at the Eiffel tower and we did make it up and down by running, but she would not let us go. She said there was no time. We all had to go down to the crypts! So off we went to the floor below the church to see all the famous people in their resting place and the history behind it. The kids enjoyed that part of the tour.

This was followed by a quick lunch outside where there were long lines in every restaurant thanks to the local business folks standing in line. We were all to gather outside in a courtyard after finding lunch. The courtyard had a big screen TV playing tennis matches and there were seats for people to just come sit and enjoy during lunch. The whole place had a relaxed atmosphere and the coulds made sure some of the heat was not felt. 

We enjoyed waiting there for 20 minutes for everyone to gather and went to our next stop. The Tower of London. On the way we were passing Trafalgar square, Picadilly circus, etc. etc. and got a lot of interesting tidbits from our guide. 

The tower of London was interesting and hindsight being 20/20 we should have just gone and seen it on our own. A lot of folks in our group split as soon as we entered the tower. ONly later we found out why. It was the last official stop and after that we got tickets for a Thames river cruise that would take us to where we wanted. We walked with the group and found that the tour was dragging.

Then we also took our cruise tickets, stood in line to go see the "crown jewels" which were mostly taken from India, all the while shaking our heads in disbelief on how the winner always gets to rewrite history.  There was no photographs allowed in the crown jewels museum. The security guards actually went after folks who took pictures and made them delete it off their phones. That automatically challenged a bunch of tourists in front of us to go take cell phone pics when no one was watching.. we found the whole thing to be very amusing..we went up to one more tower where two kids were said to have been killed in the succession wars and walked towards the cruise stop.

Here are some slide shows from the day..

The weather was perfect, contrary to what we keep hearing about "London weather being drab" and we thoroughly enjoyed the ride along the Thames.

Got some nice pano shots from the slow moving boat..

When we finally got off, we had to go to the closest underground station to meet San's college classmate for dinner. He lived 40 mintues from London but worked in the Charing Cross area. It was going to be one more exercise to find the right station and get there.

We ended up in the wrong station! We took another train and finally found him. It was another busy area with a lot of restaurants close to the Opera house. It also started raining heavily by the time we reached there, but it was pleasant. Picked a mexican place to eat dinner. The food was very yummy and we said our byes and walked back for one last subway ride for the day. 

It was a very good day as all day tours went. Would definitely recommend Evans and Evans for this tour. To quote my grandma "alangaama kulungaama kootindu ponan" .. it was a no stress tour with the right pace and right breaks.

A video of Day 12 is here..

Day 12 was great. We walked a lot but some how were not tired. We were smiling throughout the day, enjoying the sights, having a good day. I learned that it takes the family almost a dozen days to hit true vacation mode and to let go of little things and be okay.

The last day of the tour was Day 13 and was to be THE highlight of the London leg.. Hogwarts!