London Here We come

On Tuesday, September 14th, we caught a flight from Ireland to London for a 2-night stay (thank you Andy & Erin!). The salad for this day was eaten standing up, in-a-hurry to get out the door from Mandy's apartment.

After our flight, and a long bus ride, we arrived in the heart of London in the early evening. It was here, in the train station, that I had to actually pay to use a toilet for the first time ever in my life.

This entire trip, I have felt like a territorial puppy leaving its mark (i.e. using the bathroom) every couple of hours. The Mister of the House suggested I should have taken a picture of every bathroom I have used on this trip and posted it on the blog. Now wouldn't that have been delightful? I'm sure I could have easily posted a collage of twa-leys numbering around 100. Go me. Or maybe I meant to say Poor Me.

So we headed out into London and eventually came across Buckingham Palace, where The Queen lives. Royalty that doesn't actually rule the country is still a weird concept that I don't quite understand. I wanted to see the guards with the big fluffy hats, but they had the day off and some smaller-hatted guards stood in their place.

Less formal and apparently moved by instinct or threat, was the main guard that sauntered between the front gates. He had a HUGE gun, and it wasn't casually slung by his side. He had both hands on it, the back elbow slightly bent, as if he was ready to aim and shoot at the least provocation. It seriously freaked me out a little. I wanted to zoom and take a picture of him but I thought he might start a fight with me.



Eventually we made our way to Picadilly Square, the entertainment district. So the saying goes you can't stand there longer than 37 minutes without seeing somebody famous. Much to our surprise, there was a huge opening premiere for the film The Other Guys and Eva Mendes and Will Ferrel were strutting their stuff.



At this point in our trip, my main thought was: I wonder if I got an autograph how much money I could sell it for on eBay. Such is the life of a cheap Mormon on vacation in Europe. What I really wished was that Mr. Ferrell would approach me and ask me if there was anything he could do for me, to which I would reply Could I please take a picture of your furry-as-a-sweater chest? Now that would have totally fetched a sum on eBay to be sure.

During our walk back we found London's version of Chinatown.



The wet pavement was a foretelling of the downpour we were to receive walking back to the station. Despite our umbrella that Mandy the Mom packed for us, I truly got soaked to the bone. It was after this night I was chilled for the remainder of my European vacation. I laughed wondering why I thought I could travel to the UK in the autumn without packing an actual raincoat. Idiot.