London's Calling, Mind The Gap!

 My first traditional English Breakfast complete with beans!!  I didn't however partake of the mushrooms, wink, wink.  As we were eating our breakfast we could look out the windows of the hotel and see the Olympic Park.  Such a fun way to start our trip in London right before the Olympics 2012.  

After breakfast we hit the Olympic store, we took a few pics of with the mascots Wenlock and Mandeville.  After getting our cell phones all set up for our English adventure we were off to catch our Big Bus Tour!!!

 The tour has both red and blue, the difference being a live guide verse a recording.  The blue tour however goes to a few extra stops that I had on my list of must sees while in London.  We hopped on and rode the bus for a good while enjoying the bits of information shared along the way.

Trafalgar Square was a fun place to see and pick up a couple good pics.  I loved the history around the building of the square.  They built three monuments and had a place for a fourth, but nothing was ever put there.  They now allow modern art to sit upon the place for the monument.  When we visited a young boy on a golden rocking horse was being displayed.  We also got to see the Olympic countdown clock.  As you can see we were 15 days early!!

Harrods, need I say more!  I have heard so much about his shopping adventure and I was ready :)  Harrods truly makes Neimaan Marcus look like child's play.  Hours could be spent wondering this department store.  My brother's favorite thing to show people are the 100.00 infants onesie!  I however spent the majority of my time in the sports area (Olympic Merchandise) and the food area.  You could eat in Harrods every day of the year and have something different and adventuresome :)

 Back on the bus and ready for more we traveled past many famous peoples homes.  My favorite of the bunch was the writer of Peter Pan, Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet.  He built a park area for children across from his home with a statue of Peter Pan.  He had the builders erect the statue of Peter in the middle of the night so that when the  children saw the statue for the first time in the morning they would think it had appeared magically :)  

I also liked getting to drive through the streets covered in the flags from around the world in preparation of the Olympics.  Adam and I rode on the top deck until we were rained out!!

I don't think you can travel to London and see Her Majesty's Theater celebrating the Phantom of the Opera's 25th Anniversary and not mention it!   Did you know that it is the only theater that changes names...

 Indian, Italian, Irish...what to enjoy for dinner!  While we were trying to decide we ran upon Durham Street.  Adam whipped out his Duke Fuqua umbrella and we snapped a picture.  Because Adam had been in London for school in October we had the upper had on choosing a place to enjoy dinner, lucky for me he and his friends had scouted a few restaurants.  We found ourselves enjoying Moratti (an Italian Restaurant right on the Thames) for dinner.  The Italian food was amazing and the staff was fun hearted.  During our meal a train went over head and I got a little nervous!  I didn't know that we were sitting right under the tube station!  We finished our yummy meals, I got my hot cocoa for the rainy stroll to the Waterloo Tube stop and we were on our way!!

Our day was coming to a close and as we strolled across the bridge and then back over the bridge (lol) we took some fun snap shops in the rain!  We made a pit stop for a rest room break and I had to take a photo of the toilet, I had never used a rope to flush before!!

Adam and I both had fun on the tube!  As you can see my hair was getting sucked out of a window and then as soon as I would move it would blow the other way.  Escalators were pretty steep in a few of the Tube stops that we were in.  Adam rode backwards, but I wasn't that brave :) 

 We stopped off at our hotel, picked up our bags and grabbed the tube headed towards Lakenheath AFB.  Jacob was waiting for us and I was very excited about reuniting with not only him, but Rachel and Gavin as well!  An end to another adventurous day abroad :)