The Other Side of the Pond-Our Trip to England Part 2

Hundreds of Funerals and Another Wedding

I woke up the next day (Tuesday) after sleeping a glorious 10.5 hours! I can’t remember the last time that happened. We headed out to a downpour and lots of cold wind. Not ideal weather conditions, but it’s hard to be mad at a country with these iconic emblems;

What I love is that these are still all over town even though nobody uses them anymore. “Pay phone? What’s a payphone, mom?”

Our Double Decker Bus Ride! Hyde Park in the background

First big stop of the day was Westminster Abbey.

Woah. Who knew you could fit so many famous dead people in one building! This place is the Who’s Who of English history. A majority of the kings and queens of England and many of their relatives and descendants, Sir Isaac Newton, George Fredric Handel, William Wilberforce, Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, Alfred Lloyd Tennyson and Rudyard Kipling are just some of the people buried there! And if you were famous, and the English liked you enough but you weren’t buried there, you got a plaque with your name on it as well. Think C.S. Lewis. AND, most of the monarchs in England were crowned here too. The coronation chair is pretty amazing. It’s been used since 1066!!!

Here’s the current Queen Elizabeth on her coronation day in the chair.

To show you some pictures of the inside we will have to look at the most recent royal wedding that happened there!

Just a stone’s throw away from the Abbey is Westminster Palace, home of Parliament and another iconic figure.

Big Ben!

The Eye of London, Not Your Grandmother’s Ferris Wheel

It took Rock months to convince me to go on the Eye of London, a giant ride into the sky over the Thames River that allows you to see all of London. I am not a fan of ferris wheels if you’ll remember from our trip to Disneyland. I hate the swinging. HATE it. But he finally convinced me that this one was not going to swing. And I’m so glad he did. Not only did it not swing, but it gave us a wonderful awe inspiring view of London we could not have gotten otherwise. It goes so slow it takes half an hour to get around. It was a nice break from the wind and the cold too.