This is Nancy. It was marathon sightseeing in London today. We started our day with a mediocre breakfast and not enough coffee. The Limpsep Max finally took effect and Tina was ready for the marathon. We caught our bus a block away from our hotel. An obese American family got on the bus with us and we were all afraid that we were going to have to spend the day with them and their obnoxious ADHD 12 year old, but they left our tour when we got to the Victoria station and we joined the our actual tour group. Our guide, Margret???, hurried us onto the coach without an opportunity to use the WC. We took off into morning rush hour traffic.
Margret immediately began pointing out significant building after significant building at a rate that supercomputer could not remember. We finally made it to Trafalgar Square with the magnificent lions and public art. It was only hours later that I realized that we were basically traveling in circles after seeing the lion statues on three or four different occasions. We flew past Buckingham palace, Westminster Abbey, beautiful gardens, the MOST expensive real estate in the world, the Most expensive shops in the world and the WORST traffic in the world.
We were given the opportunity to finally get out of the coach for a lunch break, pee breaK, and about 45 minutes of free time. As we hiked up to watch the changing of the horse guards at THE palace, our guide Margret pointed out that the farmers were gathering close by for a demonstration march on parliment. We paid our 30 pence for a pee and marched up to watch the changing of the Queen's horse guards, which was spectacular.
We needed to get a move on and thought we could just walk through some are arches to grab a sandwich and take advantage of our 30 or so remaining minutes of free time. Amy took the lead. She successfully made it through the arches. Little did we know that this was an ultra secure area and as Tina and I stepped off the curb and a Royal Commando bellowed at Tina and I to "STOP, DON'T MOVE" waving his machine gun at us. We froze. Amy missed the command from the commando. She kept waving us on to hurry up. Neither Tina or I were inclined to make a move. Moments later the Queen's horses came stampeding through the arches. After the horses passed, we were finally free to move on.
We grabbed a sandwich and decided hike back to Westminster Abbey to get a closer look. We had about 30 minutes to get the job done and get back to the coach to head out to St. Paul's. To be continued...
This is Amy.
Continuing on with the story in a nutshell . . . .
We were late getting back to the waiting bus from Westminister, and streets were blocked off for a protest march by farmers, with all the chaos going on, I hurried ahead to hold the bus, but they wouldn't wait. I got off to meet up with Tina & Nancy who were waylaid behind the protesters. We walked & took a cab to St. Paul's and met up with our group there and continued the tour. We also toured The Tower of London.
After this exciting adventure we were expecting a relaxing ride back to our hotel, but no, we were dropped off and had to navigate our way back at rush hour. Our phones were dead, so no Google navigation services.😟
We got back around 7pm, exhausted and with sore feet. We found a buffet dinner place in our hotel, and after a few glasses of wine, and some laughs about our day we were recovered.
No comments:
Post a Comment