Hello everyone.

Today was day 2 in London. After waking up late, we had to rush down to breakfast. We enjoyed a traditional English breakfast with baked beans, eggs, sausage and bacon. The bacon is similar to what we’d call Canadian bacon, but it was pretty good. This is different from the muesli and cold cuts we get for breakfast in Germany.

From there we were out the door and on our way to the train headed to the Tower of London. This was one place many people had recommended we visit so it was on our list. The Tower of London is a historic castle located on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. The tower was founded in 1066.  When you enter the grounds there are many different areas to explore including the royal mint, the armory and the crown jewels. They have several staff dressed up and in character, telling stories and re-enacting history. We checked out the mint and the armory before we headed to the crown jewels. We had to stand in line for quite a while to see the crown jewels. Once you get inside the building you weave through different rooms with history of the jewels. When you finally get to the crown jewels, you step onto a conveyor belt that slowly moves you past them, no diddle-daddling about. And you are not allowed to take pictures of the jewels, but we took pictures of other things. (see below)

After the tower we crossed the London Tower Bridge, which I thought was London Bridge but wasn’t.

The rain picked up so we decided to head for the British Museum. This museum is free and has lots to see. We got lucky and somehow ended up in a fast-track line and bypassed tons of people. That must have saved us at least 20 minutes of standing in line in the rain. Below is the museum.

I spotted food and made a b-line for that before we headed into the museum. When we entered it was so crowded we decided to veer off to the left and go up a staircase to the second level. Little did we know there are five floors! The museum had art and artifacts from Europe, America, Egypt.. Mesopotamia, the Greeks and Romans.. all the way back to 1700 BC. It was incredible. You could easily spend days and hours at the museum, but our feet couldn’t handle that. After getting our fill of history and crowds we decided to head back to the hotel.

We stopped by a supermarket on the way back and picked up some fresh fruit and snacks for the hotel. We spent some time planning our route for tomorrow. We plan to get a lot in.. Kensington Palace, Hyde Park, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, St. Paul’s Cathedral and more. We may make it over to Greenwich if we have time and possibly a stop by 221B Baker Street.