2001. May 19. - Changing of the Guards, rest of London, plus Joci!
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).
I woke up at 7:30, but by the time I was getting ready, I already heard a knock on my door, urging me to go down and eat breakfast. Shortly after that, I did. Mrs. Thor's girlfriend - who took over the duties that day - made a pretty good breakfast, which I gobbled up fast. Then I went back up to my room to get some more sleep. I didn't wake up until 10 am...
By the time I arrived to Buckingham Palace, a huge crowd gathered before the palace, and the guard changing ceremony was already sort of on its way. I watched the whole thing which was actually pretty good, as the Scottish guards played music on the bagpipes, and the Red Guards brass band played uptempo, catchy tunes.
Then I walked over to Wellington's Arch, which wasn't terribly exciting. Since it was already getting late, I headed to St. Paul's Cathedral. As luck has it, the big place before the cathedral is being built into a shopping center of some sort (stupid), so I had to walk around it. I went inside the cathedral. My first order of business was to walk up its 530 stairs to the very top. Too bad they didn't let us into the topmost inside gallery, only the Whispering Gallery and the outside gallery. All in all, it wasn't as tiring for me as I thought, so after descending, I didn't stop until the crypt. Which was huge, and not creepy at all! The lower chapel was closed off due to a wedding taking place there. After spending some time there I decided to stop by the café (which was down there inside the crypt!), and had some light lunch.
I then headed to the HMS Belfast, and as soon as I crossed the Tower Bridge who did I bump into? Joci, my best friend from Hungary!!! What an unbelievable event!!! And I thought I'd never speak Hungarian again in London! Hah - I was dead wrong!
He was in London with Guszti and Gyuszi, his colleagues, on a business trip from Friday to Monday. But how we managed to bump into each other right by the Tower Bridge - amazing! Joci decided to stick with me, so we went thru the HMS Belfast together (yet again, this tour took longer than I thought), then - ironically - I changed my plans and became his tourguide, as he hasn't been to London before, either. By his request, we crossed the Tower Bridge, then walked around the Tower itself.
Like a good el cheapo Hungarian, Joci didn't have a daily Travelcard, but a pass to the sightseeing red bus line instead. Nevertheless, I bought him an Underground ticket, and we hopped back over to Buckingham Palace. Now I have been there 3 times already...
From there, we walked to Trafalgar Square (Admiral Nelson yet again escaped the light-sensor of my camera, grrrr), then walked to Piccadily Circus, which was jam-packed with people. So was the south end of Soho, which we also walked thru all the way to the river, where we took some pictures of Cleopatra's Needle, too. (The bastard English stole this obelisk from Egypt!) From here we walked over the nearest bridge to London Eye to meet his colleagues. Joci bought 4 tickets, gave 2 of them to his colleagues, while the 2 of us went to eat something fast in the nearby McDonald's. Neither of us ate beef...
Unfortunately, the long line was moving faster than we thought, so by the time we arrived there, Joci's colleagues were already done. We went up the big "bicycle wheel", took some pictures of the Parliament at night. Joci then managed to convince me to see the 3D Imax movie with them, so we walked over to the nearby Imax theatre. We watched Cyberworld. There were 3 parts in it that were really good, the one with the scarab and the fly, the specially remade 3D version of a scene from Antz and the 3D scene from The Simpsons.
Outside the Imax theater, we said goodbye to each other. Of course, we talked a lot to each other while we were together, and I think both of us had a pretty good time. I just still can't believe we met in the middle of London - there are definitely no accidents! I mean, what if I decided today not to go to the HMS Belfast?...
It was pretty late by this time, so I went back to Victoria and went back to the guesthouse.
