Cheers Mate! (Part Two)

After a sound sleep, we woke up for day two of our trip. A buffet breakfast was included in our room rate, so we gorged ourselves with as much food as possible. The Pound Sterling is so strong that it blows the U.S. Dollar right out of the water, so we thought we would load up on as much food as we could since it was "free". We took the tube down to Tower Bridge tube stop and went to the London Dungeon (http://www.thedungeons.com/). It's kind of touristy, but it is a neat, multi-media attraction that gives you an idea about the darker side, the seedier side of London. The queue for that was kind of long, so we waited about an hour before we could get into the attraction. There were these obnoxious "east-ender" kids behind us in line, but once we got into the attraction we kind of skipped ahead of them.

After leaving the Dungeon, we took the tube to Waterloo station and headed towards the London Eye (http://thelondoneye.com/). It's kind of like a huge Ferris wheel that gives you a fantastic view of the city in all directions. It's situated just off the Thames. To make a complete circle, it takes about an hour.

When we were done we headed to a place called Cafe Manga and had panini sandwiches for lunch. My sister had realized that European coffee is too strong for her so she decided to stick with Coca-Cola for her caffeine fix.

Next we headed over the Thames towards Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey. At this point my sister, the one who works out every day, began to notice her feet where starting to hurt. She wanted to walk around in her Uggs, these boots that are very trendy at the moment. Looking back this might not have been the best idea, as it did not offer the support of a running shoe. She accused me of trying to make her die of tiredness. Next to the Abbey were all these protesters, including one man who appeared to be supporting North Korea.

We walked thru St. James Park towards Buckingham Palace. The parks in London are phenomenal. It was Jennie's favorite part of our trip. There were all these ducks and squirrels everywhere and this one man was walking around feeding them peanuts by hand. We called him the male Snow White. He offered some to Jennie, so she was able to feed the geese. She was concerned about this one goose who was separated from the rest by a small fence and tried to get me to help her lift him over. Like that was going to happen!

Next we stopped at Buckingham Palace. The flag was raised, which means the Queen was in-residence, but she did not come to out to see us. Jennie kept getting frustrated because her camera was kind of ghetto (it went thru batteries so fast) and had a five second pause before it took the picture, and people kept walking into her photos while she was trying to take them. I thought it was kind of funny.

Green Park is situated next to the palace, so we headed thru that. There is a great fountain/monument from Canada that pays tribute to all the Canadians and British who died during WWI and WWII. It has maple leafs etched into the marble.

We hopped onto the tube at Green Park and rode down to Picadilly Circus, the equivalent of Time Square for London, then made our way to Trafalgar Square. It was getting too dark to take pictures, so we decided we would head back the next day.

We stopped at a pub called The Castle that was by our hotel and had a pint before retiring for the evening.