Whirlwind recap of London...

We're on the train to Edinburgh right now, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to fill y'all in on our time in London.

We came in early from Paris Monday morning, and the proprietress of our hotel graciously allowed us to leave our bags in our room for the day. We stopped at the local Marks and Spencer Simply Food for some breakfast egg salad sandwiches (which we actually ended up doing for the rest of the time as well), went to the London tourist info bureau to buy London Passes, and headed for the Tower. We spent most of the day there (until 4:45) - having a Beefeater tour, seeing the crown jewels, checking out the three-floor exhibit on Henry VIII (which was sweet), eating at the cafe, and - wait for it - seeing Prince William. He was there randomly for a charity event, and we just happened to be in the right place at the right time to get fairly close to him. Liz got some good pictures - poor kid looks like he's balding already. :P By this time, it started to pour and we were beat (and it was too late to go to anything else by this time) so we went back to the hotel to rest for a second before going to a pub for my birthday. We went to a local pub/restaurant and had some strong, tasty cider and some interesting grub - I got a "poacher's pie" which supposedly had pheasant, wild boar, venison, and rabbit in it, Liz got a shepherd's pie, and Becky got a ham and potato pie (even though she doesn't like ham). Everything was really good, and we ended with some lovely bread and butter pudding and a blackberry/apple crumble. It was a good birthday. :)

Tuesday we checked out Westminster Abbey (where the audioguide was narrated by Jeremy Irons!), went to the Cabinet War Rooms and the Churchill Museum, had lunch at a pub that was so packed that it took forever to get our delicious food, ran through the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery, and St. Martin-in-the-Fields, picked up some toothpaste and lotion at Boots, and had a cool dinner at a noodle bar called Wagamama. It was another successful day.

Wednesday we had a cool tour at Shakespeare's Globe and a look through the exhibition hall, went over to St. Paul's Cathedral, had a sandwich at M&S, had tea at a place called Tea, ran in at King's Cross station to print our train tickets, checked out the awesome artifacts at the British Library, and went to Kensington Palace to see the state rooms, Diana's dresses, and a cute exhibit about debutantes. We had decided earlier that we had ripped through so much money that we would forgo seeing a musical and instead did some laundry, and finished the day with some grrrreeeeeeeasy fish and chips. Yum. Our room smelled.

Along the same lines as not seeing a musical, we decided not to spend the money to go to Windsor Castle, so instead we ran over to the Tate Modern (terrible), couldn't see anything at Buckingham Palace during the changing of the guard, and ran into the Victoria and Albert Museum. We came back to Victoria Station, got lunch and sandwiches for dinner on the train, got our bags from the hotel, and started getting on the tube at Victoria when they announced that the King's Cross underground station was closed due to power failure and that we'd have to walk from the next closest station. We made it to the train with about 12 minutes to spare - we had to ask someone which train was ours because the announcement boards in the regular station were also affected by the power failure. Whew. It was a close one. The ride has been pretty good - for the first time, we have seats actually facing each other with nobody else around. We should be getting into Edinburgh in about 40 minutes. Hopefully I can get some pictures up soon. Love and miss you all!