Day 5

Today was our first full day of our tour. We went to Westminster Abbey where we had a guided tour with Tom. He gave us the history of the Abbey and showed us where some of famous graves are in the building. He was fun to listen to because he is very British and has a great sense of humor. Our favorite parts of the tour were seeing Queen Elizabeth I's grave and just looking at the amazing, beautiful architecture.
After Westminster, we took a walk down Whitehall. This is where the London government buildings are located. We walked by 10 Downing Street where the Prime minister lives, but didn't get to see much because they had police officers in the way. We had lunch at a nice pub. Kim ate a ploughman's lunch (bread, meat, fruit, and yummy goat cheese) and Micah had a large steak meat pie.
Then we hopped on a bus to head to the Tower of London. We took a tour with a Beefeater and heard about some of the famous people who were imprisoned and then executed at the Tower. After our tour we saw the British crown jewels. One crown had an amazing diamond on the top, it is the size of a tennis ball. Then we just walked around and looked in the buildings and enjoyed looking at the exhibits.
Then it was time to go back to the hotel for a quick rest. For dinner we went to a grocery store to get food for a picnic. They have great prepared foods at their grocery stores. We had pasta salads, great sandwiches and fruit. We took our picnic to the Buckingham Palace and ate on the Victoria monument right in front of the palace. What a great view!
We left the palace and walked to the London Eye. We thought it would be fun to go on the Eye at night to see London all lit up. We happened to buy tickets five minutes before closing (no lines, yeah!) and hopped on one of the last pods. There were only four other people in our same pod. London was beautiful at night. It is amazing how high up we got, Big Ben looked little. We almost didn't go on the London Eye because it is expensive. But we thought it would be fun to do at night, and also our friends Melissa and Bryan got engaged on it so we wanted to experience the Eye. We were glad we did do it. There were beautiful views!