Buckingham Palace

Day 2 and 3

So the 25^th was a long day, lots of walking. Me and couple of guys from the hostel decided to walk to Buckingham palace, about 5 km away, for the changing of the guard, have never seen so many people in one place before. It was packed, it was a Saturday after all and a whole lot of Germans had come to London for the Champions league final.

After that, we headed back towards the River Thames, passing Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament along the way. Quite spectacular buildings, as are so many in London. Everything is so much older than back home in little old NZ, so you just have to stop and look at the buildings as you walk, even if they aren't a famous building, it’s just so different so I stopped lots along the way as well.

We then headed across the river and started walking towards the London Eye. We queued briefly for tickets but decided it was going to take most of the day to get on it so kept moving down the river. We stopped by a street performer, one of many along the river. Not the best busker I've ever seen but still entertaining.  Further along we came to Tate Modern and walked around in there for a while, and then we passed Shakespeare’s Globe Theater on the way to London Bridge.

 After stopping at London Bridge we headed back towards the hostel to complete our kind of triangle of the bottom half of London. We had a couple of beers at the pub by our hostel and watched the Champions League final. I was completely worn out after that so went to bed.

The 26^th started off a little slower, didn't leave the hostel until 10.40, and headed down to the tube stop near my hostel to meet up with Tony and Bry. We caught the tube to Convent Garden and had a wander around there and headed down to Trafalgar Square. We called into the National Gallery and had a look at some paintings. Came out and there was another street performer, they’re everywhere during the weekends from what I've seen, but it might just be the good weather we had yesterday and the today.

Anyway we moved on, walking down Paul Mall, once again the buildings are all incredible and completely different to back home. We found a pub along the way and called in for lunch.  Afterwards we worked our way to Hyde Park and walked along the outside for a bit then went down to one of the main roads and found our way to Harrods. We had a look around there, found some crazy things, like a watch for 275,000GBP.

Then we headed to the Natural History museum to look at dead animals. Was interesting but we were all getting pretty tired so went to a convenience store to buy a few beers and headed to Kensington Park to enjoy the sun and have a drink. It was quite strange being able to go into the equivalent of a dairy and buy singular bottles of beer and be able to drink them in the open, but at the same time it was really good. Got back to the hostel about 7.30, got some dinner then was in bed by 10. Long days out walking are making me sleep well though.