
We arrived in London late in the afternoon on Friday after taking a short 1 1/2 hour flight from Ireland. Since this is our last leg, we decided to forgo the "apartment" gigs, and hook up with a real hotel. We're staying at the Marriott in Kensington. We wandered around a bit in the neighborhood and took in a early evening dinner at a really good Thai restaurant.
The architecture has been so beautiful with each country we've visited, which is the first thing I noticed (maybe my real estate background). I really love all of the old apartment buildings. Of course, our oldest buildings back home in Denver are only from the late 1800's or early 1900's. Buildings in Europe are so much older.









Below is the balcony at Buckingham Palace where, Prince William and Kate Middleton, came out and waved to the crowd after their recent wedding. (not that exciting, I know, but worth noting:)



Hyde park is one of the largest parks in central London, and one of the "Royal" parks famous for it's "Speakers Corner". We did not see any major debates going on, which might be a good thing. I think Tom would have gotten into the spirit of heckling, if we did.
We did get the chance to walk through one of the many "Queens Rose gardens" which were quite beautiful.
We then hopped on the bus and took it over to the "tower" side of London, which is the original London. We visited the tower of London, the "new" London bridge, the London "eye" and took a river cruise down the Thames. The original London bridge actually did "fall down" in different periods of time, the current bridge is at least the third one in the same spot.
The London Tower bridge was also quite impressive. The bridge is so popular that some people think that it is actually London Bridge. Perhaps the most-photographed of all of London's bridges. Tower Bridge is comparatively young—it went into service in June 1894. The true London Bridge was sold to Lake Havasu, Arizona and erected in 1971.
We took a City Cruise ferry boat from the Tower back to Westminster area, Big Ben and the Parliament building. It was a great way to go, with a witty commentator giving us some local color about all of the sites. We were pretty beat by this time, starting to feel the effects of three weeks on the road, but we enjoyed the boat ride and got another view of the city. By the time we got back to the tour bus to head home, we were just a bit catatonic, and numbly listened to the prerecorded narration for the next 45 minutes!
Now out to dinner! Thanks for reading this, we love you!
This is our last blog. We leave on Monday morning (tomorrow) to return home. It has been a wonderful and exciting trip and we really enjoyed sharing it with you, our family and friends. We hope that you also enjoyed in traveling with us throughout Europe. Cheerio!
Tom & Vicki