The pictures were made by LaLa. The thumbnails were generated by IrfanView.
If you want to, I can send you the original, 1152x864 size pictures in email (about 300KB/picture).
After a 20 minute journey from Bromley South I arrived to Victoria Station in London. After getting lost for a short time by doing a wrong turn I managed to walk to Buckingham Palace, where some sort of ball was going on, because the elegant ladies in their hats and the lords in their black jackets and cylinder hats kept streaming in and going inside the palace grounds. I quickly crossed St. James' Park to see the changing of the Horse Guards at 11am. Then I rushed back to catch the 11:30am changing of the Guards at Buckingham, but as luck has it, it was canceled. So, I decided to go straight to Big Ben and the Parliament. Took some pictures, then walked over the bridge to London Eye. I went up on it, took a bunch of pictures and decided that Budapest's river front at the Danube is actually nicer. I mean, over here they have the Big Ben and the Tower Bridge (which I couldn't see from London Eye) - and that's it, really. The rest is hotels, businesses, government buildings, etc. The rest of the historic buildings are all "inside", some ways from the Thames.
From London Eye, I went back to Big Ben, then did the audio tour of Westminster Abbey, which was very informative, but took quite some time and a lot longer than what I planned. And, unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the Abbey.
Coming out of the Abbey, I walked to 10 Downing Street - yet another disappointment, as one couldn't actually go to the door - all of Downing Street was closed at both ends by big gates. On to Trafalgar Square to take some pictures of Admiral Nelson's Column (which all turned out to be overexposed due to my stupid camera). Then rushed back to the Horse Guard's residence, where at 4pm the changing of the Life Guards took place. That took a helluva long time - the commanders of the two Life Guards were chatting for like 15 minutes before the other group arrived!
It was 4:30 pm by this time, so I took the Tube from Westminster to Tower Hill. "Naturally", The Tower closed at 5pm, so I went to the Tower Bridge instead. Which closed at 5:15pm, so I managed to catch the very last tour. And while we were inside, it started to rain outside. But luckily, just when the tour ended, they opened up the bridge, which was a cool coincidence.
From here I walked along the Thames to find a restaurant, as I was starving really badly. But all I found was expensive upscale restaurants. Finally, I remembered my cousin's suggestion of Chi-Chi's, so I took the tube to Queensway, which wasn't a short journey, either. Of course, I couldn't find Chi-Chi's, much less the shopping mall it's in, so I walked past some Chinese and Mandarin restaurants before I finally found something remotely British: the Aberdeen Angus Steak House. I ordered today's special, which was a grilled chicken in wine sauce and with mushrooms, plus I also had a tomato cream soup before that. The owner (?) and my very cute waitress were speaking Russian amongst themselves - so much about authentic food!
From here, I took the tube to Victoria. BTW, it's interesting how many tube-lines share the same physical trails! Sometimes I had to wait up to 6 minutes before the line I was waiting for arrived, even though 2-3 other trains might have passed me in the meantime... Oh yeah, and the Tube is right-hand drive, too. Extremely confusing. It's like I am in mirrorland! Luckily, the signs are fantastic and hard to miss. Same at the pedestrian crossings, where it's printed on the street to "LOOK LEFT" or "LOOK RIGHT" to tell tourists from where they should expect traffic...
Actually I find it next to impossible to get used to this right-hand side traffic. Not only as a pedestrian, where I have to look to the "wrong" way first, but also when yesterday the cab driver told me to get in, I promptly moved to the right side of the car (wrong!), or when Chris told me to get into his Toyota MR2, I did the same thing, and I find it equally hard to get used to the fact that the bus stops are on the other side of the road than where I expect them to be...
Anyway, at Victoria I hopped on a train. There was a drunken dude behind me sitting with his very sober buddy. His buddy was very helpful and very kind to him, but the drunk was - well, drunk! Cursing, lost, dizzy - everything. And he never shut up. They finally got off a few stations before mine, and as the sober dude stood up he said to the other passangers: "Ladies and gentleman, thank you for your patience!" Everybody was smiling! Nobody said anything like "stupid drunk" or whatever! They were actually entertained!
BTW, the girls are not bad here, either, certainly a lot better than their reputation is outside of this country. Many of them even look younger than I suspect they really are! (Either that, or I am just really desperate, he-he...)
Back in Bromley I realized I forgot to take out some money from the cash machine (oh yeah, they don't call them ATM machines here!). So I took a walk past my guesthouse, but of course, there were no cash machines other than the one at the rail station. And I wasn't going to walk back there for sure. But I managed to scrape together 100 pounds - my room actually cost 40 pounds per night. (The breakfast was awesome there and a lot, too! That's why I didn't have lunch today, just a short break with the banana I got from the morning table and a bottle of Coke.)
Anyway, very busy day, and it's close to midnight now. Tomorrow is the big event! Too bad I'll have to wake up early for it...
