Gower Street
Day 2 started with us having our breakfast at the hotel lounge as part of the travel package, you know the normal stuff such as croissant, cereal and toast. Little did we know that this will ultimately be our staple food throughout our stay here. We proceeded to the hotel lobby after finishing our breakfast to wait for our tour guide, our guide arrived somewhat late than scheduled. We quickly hop on the feeder bus that will take us to a central bus station located at Victoria station which is designated as our embarkation point where we will assemble before hoping on to our tour bus.
In front of Royal Albert Hall
Harvey Nichols
Albert Memorial
Hyde Park
Albert Memorial
Our tour guide is a certified blue badge so she knows a lot about London or UK history for that matter, It’s nice to know we're in good hands and these folks sure take their history and business seriously. We're driven around Central London through popular tourist spot and shoppers haven such as Trafalgar Square, St James Park, Harrods and Harvey Nichols. Our first pit stop for the day is Royal Albert Hall and Albert Memorial which is situated adjacent to each other. Prince Edward Memorial is built on Kensington Garden. We spent approximately 30 minutes here before we hurriedly have to go to Buckingham Palace in order to catch a glimpse of the changing of the palace guards. This event is somewhat unique as it won’t be carried out if the weather is not permitting but fortunately the weather was on our side that day. We managed to see the guards changing ceremony from the very beginning until the end.
St James Park
Guards Changing
Guards Changing
Entrance to St James Park
We did pass by Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and a couple of tourist spot on the way to Buckingham Palace which we fully intend to revisit once the tour finished. Our tour then stopped for Lunch at Victoria Street where instead of having lunch we decided to have a tour of our own along Trafalgar Square and National Gallery. Disaster strikes while we're enjoying our walk, the sole of my bloody shoes came off of my freaking shoes. We had to abort our plan to walk around the area and headed to nearby shop lot to scout for affordable shoe. We managed to purchase one at Charing Cross which is quite a bargain from my point of view.
Tourism Malaysia (Trafalgar Square)
Nelson Column
National Gallery
National Gallery
Big Ben
Entrance to Palace
By that time lunch has already ended and we have to make our way back to our tour group and continue our journey with the rest of them. Next stop is St Paul Cathedral which is quite huge and was build by the Romans who decided to pick a spot in eastern London along Thames River to set up a settlement. We only took pictures of the building exterior as we're barred from taking any pictures inside the building. After approximately 1 hour here, we're headed to maybe the highlight of today tour which is Tower of London and Tower Bridge. We spent quite a lot of time roaming this spot on our own as the place is huge with a lot of interesting things and facts to be discovered upon. It started to rain when we're about to queue to get into Crown Jewel's storing location so we decided to take a rain check. We left the building immediately in our attempt to beat the queue to board Thames River cruise boat, before we left, we had Fish and Chips, I mean you can’t come to London and not sample their Fish and Chips, do you?
Tower of London
Tickets to Tower of London
Tower Bridge
St Paul's Cathedral
There was quite a lot of historical building and attractions alongside river Thames, chief among them are Tate Modern, Royal National Theater, HMS Belfast, Globe Theater and London Eye. River Thames cruise took about 1 hour to reach its final destination which is Waterloo where we're supposed to disembark and end our tour for the day. By the time we reach Waterloo station, its already 5 p.m and we're pretty much exhausted after spending countless hours walking about.
Tower of London Ravens
Outside of Tower of London
Guard in front of Jewel House
Execution point of Anne Boleyn and various others
We head straight back to King Cross station when all of a sudden we decided to take a detour and went to St Pancreas International Station instead. The main reason why we went there is to find out how much does it cost for us to travel to Paris using Eurostar train. What we discovered was a huge letdown, it costs us 430 pound for a return ticket in order for both of us to go to Paris. At this juncture, we decided not to go and save the money instead and started our long walk to our hotel where we had dinner, sleep and prepare for tomorrow.
Thames River banks
Thames River cruise
Regards,
MARK
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