Royal London

While Brian was at his meeting at the Royal Society, I had the opportunity to roam the Royal part of London. If you have only 1/2 a day or less to see London, this is the area to go to. Within walking distance, you can see Buckingham Palace, St. Jame's Park, Westminster Abbey, Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, Picadilly Circus, Leicester Square and the theatre's West End. And these are just the bigger name, well-known sights. Of course, if you want to go inside any of them, you'll need more than 1/2 a day. But on Tuesday, it was warm and sunny day, and I could have sat in St. Jame's Park the entire afternoon. It was the most gorgeous park I'd been in and was full of British people on their lunch breaks or strolling through. It also helps that it's one of the Royal parks, so of course it's absolutely perfect.

After Brian headed to his meeting, I grabbed some take-away (take out) for lunch. It's very common here that everyone eats lunch on the go, even while they are walking down the sidewalk. Pre-made and pre-packaged sandwiches are the most popular, with bags of crisps (potato chips) and a cookie or something. I stopped in one of the take-away chain shops called Eat. and grabbed an Asian chicken noodle salad and cookie. Headed to the park and had lunch in the grass. Not too tough for a Tuesday afternoon! Eventually peeled myself away from the park to walk around the area and see what Brian and I should check out when he was done with his meeting.


At 3 p.m. we met up and visited Buckingham Palace, walked through the park some more, to Big Ben and Parliament, by Westminister, by Whitehall palace and the Horse Guards, and took pics by The Royal Society. We also found an Information place where we could book discount tickets for a play that evening. We stopped at a pub close by Parliament, and realized we were having a pint with many of the lobbyists (if that is what they call them here) between the hours of 5-6 p.m. Luckily, we had dressed up a bit so we didn't scream tourists and kind of had fun trying to blend in a bit with that scene. Seemed by 6 though, they had all cleared out (had to get home to the wives and fams I suppose) and the tourists started to come in. By then, we headed to West End area to grab dinner at an Italian restaurant close to the Garrick theatre, where our play was showing.

It's a new play, called Treats. There are three characters, one girl and two guys. The fun part about it was that all three actors are well-known TV stars, roughly in their 30s. The one guy we knew from watching a BBC sitcom called "My Family" and he was the goofy son in the show. So we thought it was fun to see him in a live performance. The girl is in a TV show called Dr. Who, and the other guy is in a new show called Lewis, which is a spin off to the Inspector Morse movies. Anywho, the play was about the girl trying to decide between the jerk of an ex-boyfriend and the overly boring new boyfriend. We enjoyed it and was glad we were able to catch a show. We stopped at Starbucks on our way back to the train (yes, there is now even a Starbucks on almost every corner in London or Oxford) and headed back home. A very, very fun day in London!