London

For our 35th anniversary we took a trip to Europe with 10 friends. 
You'll get to meet them all plus a few others during our travels.  
This is a short narrative of our journey and our adventures.
Hope you enjoy it!

Our tour was through Insight Vacations.

 That's our tour guide, Lorenzo, on the right
and our wonderful bus driver, Antonio.



Our first stop was London!

 Where tourists are prompted to look for traffic in the correct direction!

Our travel buddies...

Barb, Terri (me), Kirk, Viza, Paul

Alathia, Dennis, Trish, Bill

and Roy at the far end.
The dirty dozen:-)

We stayed at the Thistle Marble Arch which was near Hyde Park and the Marble Arch. 

 It's a large hotel, filling a city block, and centrally located close to the tube.  
Breakfast was wonderful!

There's the Marble Arch!

And, of course we had to see all the attractions that everyone comes to London to see...

 

The London Eye

the Royal Procession into Buckingham Palace

and there's the palace! The Queen wasn't home.

It was really crowded and cold with rain threatening.

But we managed to see everything anyway.

That's Westminster Abbey behind us.

We wanted to go inside, but didn't have enough time. 

However after chatting with a very nice guard at the gate, 

he decided to give us a private tour!  Awesome!!!

  And being Methodist we had to pop in to the Methodist Hall.

St. Paul's Cathedral
In England the museums are free
but it costs a bunch to go into a church!
St. Paul's was L16 or about $25 per person!

 

Prince Albert Memorial

Barb and I bracing wind and rain at the Tower of London.
We saw the Crown Jewels but weren't allowed to take pictures.

I really wanted to go to the British Museum

to see the Rosetta stone,

the Egyptian artifacts

 and Roy!

Of course we rode the double-decker bus
and took in the traffic along with city views.

Oh my!

There are still working phone booths in London!

 It was so dreary it almost seemed like we were in Dickens times.

London was wet and cold, but we had fun.

Next we head to Dover and take the ferry to Calais,
then on to Amsterdam.