First day in London and the last day of my 50's!!

We were up relatively early and I discovered that the shower in the bathroom was really pretty good.  You could set it to an ordinary shower or 'rainwater', which was pretty good.  After a reasonably good leisurely breakfast, it was time to see the sights.  We bought a 24 hours open topped 'Big Bus' ticket each for £30 and extended it for £6 to 48 hours, which would cover our whole stay and would mean we could use them as and when we wanted and be able to see the sights of London rather than be stuck on a tube train seeing nothing.  As the weather was actually quite good that morning, it was the perfect opportunity to take the bus right round the circuit so that we could see everything and get our bearings.

We stopped nearto Big Ben where we found a place for lunch which was actually very reasonably priced considering where we were!

It's actually the clock that is Big Ben and not the building

I almost forgot to say that the bus ticket we bought also includes a boat trip down to Greenwich, and you can use this as many times as you want, so you could pop down there in the morning for the market and a spot of lunch then catch another boat back to the docking point near the Tower of London.

I'm not going to include too many photos taken from the bus as most of them are at strange angles!!  Here are one or two that were taken from the top deck:

Rear view!

It was nice of them to put the banners out for me!!!

Trying out the black & white filter but picking out the colour red

We also tried out the Mr Whippy ice cream at the van on the banks of the Thames

Although we done the full circuit on the bus, we did stop off at Buckingham Palace for a wee look at the Queen's house!!  It was quite busy as some sort of event was happening and there were many people there all dressed up to the nines.  Luckily, the weather was quite pleasant for them.  The next two photos were taken using the black and white filter again, but just picking our red colours.  It was the perfect filter for London!!

Guards at Buckingham Palace

Guard at Buckingham Palace

From Buckingham Palace we decided to walk down The Mall which was still all bedecked out in Union Jacks, towards Horseguards Parade.

The Mall all bedecked out in Union Jacks

Trying out that filter effect again!

On guard duty

On guard duty

So, after a bit of a hectic day and a whistle-stop tour of the major sites, it was almost time to head back to the hotel, however no visit to London would be complete without a visit to one of its most famous stores - Harrods!!

We decided to splash out and have a coffee in their coffee shop, but it was busy and there was quite a wait involved before we could get a seat, so we left and popped over to a coffee shop on the other side of the street where we had lovely coffee and a cake at a fraction of Harrods' prices!!

Scrummy strawberry tart (well, it was the start of Wimbledon!!)

After a little bit  of shopping in Harrods we caught the bus back to the stop near the hotel then had a look around for somewhere to have dinner.  We found a nice looking London pub that looked nice - think it may have been the Pride of Paddington - but the meal wasn't that good really.  The interesting thing about this place though was the fact that you could feel your seat vibrating as the tube trains rumbled past somewhere deep underneath you!!

After a rather disappointing dinner, it was back to the hotel to refresh ourselves for the 'big' birthday the next day!!