Elisa, Nicole and I planned an 8 night trip to London and Paris. The plan was for Elisa and I to meet Nicole in London. We had planned our flights to land within 5 minutes of each other. Everything was going great until Elisa and I's plane headed back to the gate in SLC because one of the engines wouldn't start. We had a 50 minute layover in Minneapolis and we were already 30 minutes into our supposed flight when we headed back to the gate. Our flight finally left and hour and a half late and we were prepared to spend the night with Elisa's parents in Minneapolis. Luckily for us there were 15 people on our flight trying to make that London connection so they held the plane for us. During all this time we were trying to call and text Nicole on her layover in Atlanta but in typical Nicole fashion she was just in vacation mode and her phone stayed off. We really missed the flight and she was going to be wandering around Heathrow trying to find us, but instead we landed right before her and she knew nothing of our stress! Gotta love Miss Nicole!
Now that we were back on track our vacation could begin! After quickly checking into the hotel and a quick shower we headed to Parliament for our 4:30 tour. Here are some pictures from the day and please remember we had been traveling all night and only showered our bodies so we may look a bit jet lagged.
Big Ben (and Me and Nicole)
This is the only place you were allowed to take photos inside of the Parliament building. It was an amazing building that they are still using for Parliament sessions today. I really enjoyed learning more about how England's government works (I really didn't know much to begin with).
Day 2 was Sunday so we started the day by going to sacrament meeting in a ward that was literally a 10 minute walk from our hotel. Lovely. While we were there not one person spoke in an English accent.....very depressing as I was hoping to hear church in their beautiful accent. Instead a bunch of American expat's from Provo spoke....lame!
After church we visited the Victoria and Albert Museum where they were having a display of ballroom gowns through the ages. All I can say is that I'm very happy I didn't have to wear all the get up that women used to wear. I would have melted to death! Sadly no pictures were allowed so you can only use your imaginations.
Then it was on to Kennsington Palace to see where the Royal Family (and more importantly Will and Kate) will be living. Of course we will have to wait for them to die to see their wing of the palace, but we did see Queen Victoria's wing and being big fans of the movie "The Young Victoria" we were very happy as well as Princess Diana memorabilia.
Prince Albert was a very short man.....
It was a little hot for me so I stood in the shade while Nicole and Elisa held our place in line.
The next day we headed to the Churchhill war rooms from WWII. It was a very interesting tour of the bunker where Winston Churchill called all of the shots for WWII. Then we headed to Buckingham Palace to try to watch the changing of the guard, but with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee coming up the same weekend they had a lot of Buckingham Palace blocked off. We then headed to Westminster Abbey which was an amazing cathedral with so much history taking place there.
The other girls had fish and chips, but with my hatred of fish I opted for roast beef. An excellent choice (although London really didn't have great food).
Another thing that we found was London does NOT believe in trash cans. We walked for miles before you would see a trash can on the street to ditch your stuff in. Very odd.
Of course we had to see a few shows in London. We saw Singin' in the Rain and the Lion King. It is hard to replace Gene Kelly, but it was really fun to see the show live and it even rained (alot!) on stage. Enough to make huge puddles and splash the screaming audience. Good thing we were in the mezzanine and not the orchestra :)
We also went to the Tower of London where they had the funniest tour guides.We also got to see the Crown Jewels which were CRAZY. Seriously I've never seen so many diamonds, rubies, etc.
We also went to St. Paul's Cathedral and I learned now that I didn't take one picture of the Cathedral part. Just this one outside. Anyways, it was a beautiful cathedral although it had very scary steps to the top of the dome for Elisa and I who had a little problem with heights. The stairs were grated so you could see through them down many, many flights of stairs. I was brave, but honestly had to give myself a few pep-talks.
Some pictures from the top of the cathedral....you know to prove I made it up there and all.
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