Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 2

Hey guys,

I hope everyone had a great weekend! I'm finally posting about London day 2 (and I plan to blog about the rest of my trip this week and finishing it next week)! I'm so sorry for not posting it last Friday like I said I would. I just got too busy with the holiday weekend and preparing to go out of town. I actually ended up going out of town again this past weekend. We stayed at Disney's Fort Wilderness Campground and on Friday my sister and I joined my cousin at 3 of the parks (Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios). We are major Disney fans so we go there a lot!

On our second day in London we hit up a few of the big sites such as Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and Big Ben. Our first stop of the day was Buckingham Palace. When we got to the palace there were so many people; it was crazy! The palace wasn't actually as big as I thought it was going to be and I also can't believe how out in the open it is. I don't think I could handle having that many people standing outside of my house every single day.

Since Buckingham palace was so crowded and because we also had to use the restroom, we decided to leave and come back later when it was closer to the time of the changing of the guard. We decided to check out The Queens Gallery and The Royal Mews. The Queen’s Gallery featured a collection of artwork by Maria Merian and a few different Scottish Artists.

We also checked out TheRoyal Mews, which is where the carriages and horses are kept whenever they aren’t in use.

After checking out The Queen’s Gallery and The Royal Mews it was time for lunch so we found a little cafe across the street. I had a turkey, tomato, and cheese sandwich, my sister had a small pizza and then my mom had soup because at this point she was starting to feel like she was getting a cold (which we all ended up catching by the end of the trip).

After lunch we headed back to the palace to watch the changing of the guards.

Watching the changing of the guards was neat but it's definitely not something I would include as a “must do” when you are visiting London. The whole ceremony took FOREVER and you literally have to get there ASAP and stay there until it is over because all of the good spots get taken really quickly and if you don't have a good spot you can't see anything. I however, was able to use my selfie stick and hold it over people's heads to see what was going on. I also filmed some of it and from what I saw/filmed, it was extremely boring and a waste of time (don't kill me for saying that).

After we finished at the palace we hopped on the tour bus and headed towards Westminster Abbey. We unfortunately were not allowed to take pictures inside of the church but it was beautiful inside. One thing I was not expecting to find inside was the fact that so many people were buried inside. They had several rooms that features coffins of famous dead priests and/or kings and queens. There were also several memorials inside for famous authors and poets.

I felt like including the last picture outside of Westminster Abbey because I wanted to show you guys how windy this city like almost all of the time. I also thought it was a really funny photo and everyone could use a good laugh every now and then. So I hope you enjoy!

Once you exit Westminster, Big Ben (which is actually the clock inside the tower not the tower itself) is to the right of the church. We didn’t actually go up close to big ben but we stood in Parliament Square and took photos of it and photos of us with it.

For dinner we tried this place called Byron Hamburgers, which is a chain restaurant in London. They served mostly hamburgers and they also had hot dogs. We each had a hamburger and we also got a side of Mac n cheese and fried onion rings. The Mac and cheese was kind of spicy compared to American Mac n cheese but it was still pretty tasty. However, it was so much food that we didn't really get to enjoy all of it.

Also, one thing we learned in London is that to-go food is actually take-away. So we got take-away and ate our dinner in our hotel room while we relaxed a little bit before going back out into the city.

In the evening, we headed out to Kings Cross Train Station to check out h the Harry Potter stuff that they have there. My sister and I of course took full advantage of the photo op where you get to pretend to push the cart through 9 3/4. I chose to be in Slytherin and my sister chose Gryffindor! It was a fun experience but the lighting they had set up was terrible and it made my sister and I both very overexposed so we figured we would just stick with our iPhone photos instead because they turned out just as bad haha!

How funny (and true) is this advertisement that was on one of the underground trains that we went on. British accents are so cute! I really wish I had one haha.

Thanks for stopping by!

Feel free to leave a comment or share this with your friends!

XO, Steph

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