Fuzzy hats, wind, and tea

After a decent night's sleep, we had breakfast at a café across the street and then walked the two blocks over to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard. There were a lot of tourists waiting, at least six layers deep and I didn't feel particularly inspired to fight my way into the crowds, so we walked down the mall toward Horse Guard's Parade to see the changing of the guard there. As it turned out, there was some construction going on outside the building, so it was a no go, but we happened to be in the right spot at the right time as one of the regiments marched from around the corner toward Buckingham Palace.

Then we took the tube to Tower Hill. We walked by the Tower of London, which we elected to just view from the outside since it was quite expensive. After snapping a few pictures of Tower Bridge, we walked toward St Paul's Cathedral. On the way, we made a stop at The Monument, a tower built in the 17th century to commemorate a big fire back in the day. I had read that there were decent views from the top, so after waiting for 30 schoolchildren to clear out from the narrow spiral stairs, we scaled the 301 steps to the top.

We had to shoot our photos through some fencing going around the top, but we made it work. It was quite windy at the top of the tower, so we didn't spend too much time loitering and taking in the view. We walked down the 301 steps to the bottom and grabbed some lunch down the street at a French café chain with views of St Paul's Cathedral while we ate outside in the cold (there were no seats inside). Then we jumped on the tube once more to go to the British Museum. We checked out the main highlights such as the mummies from Egypt, the Rosetta Stone, and the sculptures from the Parthenon in Greece. Having been to both the Pyramids in Giza and the Acropolis in Athens, the originating countries of these exhibits are not too pleased that the British have not offered to give back their treasures. Tsk tsk. After the museum, we headed back to our area near St James's Park, but before we went to our "flat," we grabbed some scones and tea at a small café. It seemed like the proper thing to do.

 It was a delightful mid-afternoon snack and a nice warmup from the cold weather outside. I may have initially stated that the weather isn't that different from LA, but I retract that statement. We very rarely get any kind of strong wind in Southern California, and the wind here is quite biting. Poor us. We had a busy day, so we just spent some time at the "flat" relaxing before trying to figure out what we will do for the rest of the evening.