London Calling

We took the train to London this morning. I'm so accustomed to being able to just hopping onto trains in Europe, but that was not the case for this one. I'm glad we got to the station early. It took us nearly and hour to get through security and immigration. I also was expecting to be able to see the English Channel as we approached the tunnel, but we never did. We went from seeing fields to tunnels several times, so I'm not even sure when we were under water.

London is lovely though. The people here are much friendlier than the people in Paris. We are also enjoying the cooler weather after suffering through the heat wave in Paris.  Just walking from our hotel we ran into this church. It's Westminster Cathedral. It's not in any guide book but I thought it was pretty.

We stopped at McDonalds for lunch; we are not foodies at all! I think it was Coral's favorite part of the day. Instead of placing your order with a person at a counter there were several large touch screen kiosks. We selected our meals and then inserted a credit card. A reciept printed out with a number that we took to the back of the restaurant where our order was already waiting for us. It was so efficient. I've heard about these ordering kiosks in Oregon, where the technology turns out to be cheaper than the outrageously high minimum wage, but I had never used one. It was pretty neat.

After lunch we went to Buckingham Palace. It's not nearly as ostentatious as the Parisian palaces, I guess that's why there hasn't been a revolution here yet! 

From there we got on the Hop on Hop off bus for a tour around the city. We saw all the highlights so if we don't get to everything at least we've seen it driving by, like this picture of the more famous Westminster churches, Westminster Abbey.

There are wonderful flowers everywhere here, just as there were in Paris. These lovely hanging baskets line the street of our hotel. We walked down the street a bit to a local pub called Grumbles where we had fish and chips for dinner. Tomorrow we're going to Stonehenge!