Remember Remember the 5th of November, London Day 2

Fence around the Palace Gardens

Our tourist map of London informed us that everyday at 11 and 1 there is a free tour of London that meets at The Wellington Arch.... perfect, now to find it! Because of the idiot from the previous day, I was still not so sure about my map skills. According to what he told me, I had the map flipped around in my mind, but deep down I knew I was right. So we started our trek across the park again, this time sticking to the perimeter. There were maps every so often in the park so we kept checking them. According to the maps in the park we continually got closer to our destination even though we were walking in the direction the idiot from the day before told us was the wrong direction. Finally we came to the southeast corner and we could see exactly where we needed to be... score! We were plenty early so we ventured off to see what we could find. We ended up walking around the heavily protected Palace Gardens. In London, public restrooms are very hard to come across and when you do happen to stumble upon one, you usually have to pay to use it. So before the tour started we stopped in a little coffee shop and got some water and used the restrooms. For the most part we brought food with for us to eat to save on money... so for now I can live without peanut butter sandwiches and granola bars!

With our tour guide Thomas

We headed back to the Wellington Arch a little before 11 and found a huge cluster of people and knew we were in the right spot. Because there were so many people, they broke the tour group into several smaller groups, there were 24 in ours. Our guide was a hilarious young man from Ireland named Thomas. He told us lots of fun stories and showed us all the great tourist sites in London... for free! We started at Buckingham Palace and we just happen to arrive at the exact time they were doing the changing of the guard. This was pretty cool because in the winter they only do it every other day, we got lucky! We couldn't really see because there were so many people, but I got some pretty good pictures which you can find on facebook! Thomas also told us some fun stories about the palace and a great story about a drunken Irish man who broke into the palace.

After the palace we headed toward Traflagar Square, home of the Admiral Nelson Memorial and the huge Lions. We were told the story of how Admiral Nelson and his crew won some huge battle but he was killed at the end. Instead of throwing the admiral overboard they stuck him in a barrel of rum to transport him home. After the crew returned home they found out during their celebrations of winning a huge battle, they had drank from the barrel the admiral had been in... gives a whole new meaning to the popular Admiral Nelson Rum brand.

After that we headed toward the most well known part of London, towards Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and Parliament. After turning the corner, the site was so unreal. Every time I think of London, that is what I thought of. Big Ben, which isn't actually the tower but rather the bell inside the tower, was absolutely amazing. We then walked around and stood facing parliament where Thomas told us the story of the conspiracy behind blowing up the building in 1605. Guy Fawkes was a Catholic who was tired of being a second class citizen because of his religion so he plotted to teach the government a lesson by blowing up their building. Long story short, one of his friends got cold feet and told on him. They caught him and tortured him until he gave all of the names of the conspirators. There is a little poem that goes along with this story and it goes like this:

"Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot..."

This idea behind this story can be seen in the great movie "V for Vendetta" if your interested. And after the story that was the end of our "free" tour. Thomas did such a great job we just had to tip him :)

We then ventured off on our own to find The Apollo Victoria theatre, home of Wicked! Once we arrived we found out there were only a few tickets left, but there did happen to be 4 together so we snatched them up right away! The only problem with this was more of our group was coming that night and they didn't have tickets yet.... I really really wanted to stand in line the next morning to get a front row seat but no one else wanted to. Every morning the theatre sells 24 front row seats, first come first serve. So there was no guarantee we would get them anyways but I still wanted to try. I figured it would be like a black Friday type deal where you stand in line forever to get the best deal but no one else went for it, oh well!

After that, we didn't really have any plans so we decided to set off on another walking tour of our own. We were not far from a bridge that would cross the River Thames, so we set off in search of it. All of the great sites of the city could be seen from the other side of the river so I knew it would be well worth the walk. As we were crossing the bridge we even got the see the sun for about 5 minutes before it set, very beautiful! As soon as we got across the bridge we found ourselves on a beautiful river walk called the Jubilee Greenway. As we walked north we could immediately see the London Eye on our side of the river and parliament and Big Ben on the other side. It was quite a beautiful site! We decided to continue on the river walk all the way to the end which I would guess was at least 5 miles. It took us over 2 hours to walk from Wicked to the end of the river walk, but it was so worth it! We passed a lot of great sites on the way including Shakespeare's Globe theatre, London bridge, and we ended at the Tower Bridge. After all that walking, we decided we did more than enough and we would treat ourselves to the Underground on the way home. All in all, it was a VERY successful day. We saw pretty much everything London had to offer and we did it for a very good price, almost free!

Stay tuned for the final installment of my adventure of London which I should have done soon!

Until tomorrow...

~Amy