Day Four
Outskirts of London
August 12 2007 - 12:25

We are currently sitting on the Eurostar train travelling through the outskirts of London. As I forgot to write about yesterday I will do so now.

We had a little sleep-in until 8:30 or 9:00, before heading out to Buckingham Palace. I’m finding the London Underground system to be chaotic, but well organised. Without the good setup (frequent trains, coloured criss-crossing lines, etc) it would be impossible to navigate but as it is we’re having no problems whatsoever.

To buy tickets to the Palace took us around half an hour, at which point we had to wait in yet another line to get in. It was, however, totally worth it as the interior State Rooms of the palace are splendiferous in their magnificent opulence. Rooms are huge, with gold leaf everywhere, as well as works of art in all free spaces. We missed the changing of the guard but saw some of it from the “quadrangle” in the middle of the Palace. A unique viewing angle to be sure!

After, we sat in the Palace gardens and ate some extravagant ice cream which was 90% cream. Or at least it seemed to be.

I’d wanted to visit St Paul’s and climb to the top so we traveled there next. The price was an absurd £8.50 each (about $25) so we decided against it. Justine wanted to get more locations on her “Monopoly” tour so for the rest of the afternoon we walked or “tubed” the streets hunting for the locations. There are only seven of the twenty-six locations left and we know where most of them are. Mayfair has proved to be elusive as we aren’t sure whether it is a street or just the suburb. Either way we’ll find it next time we come back to London (in about six weeks).

During the walking tour (which ended up showing us a lot of the city we may have otherwise missed) we also visited 221b Baker St (Sherlock Holmes’ house). Technically there never was a 221b and there definitely isn’t one there now, but there is a Sherlock Holmes museum a few doors down which has a re-creation of the famed address. Even the Baker St station has images of Sherlock Holmes all over and seems to be a restored 19th century station.

The train is picking up pace now so I will sign off as I want to see the view!