The Panoramic Bus Tour

Today, not much interesting happened. I went to the grocery store, the gym and did a three pound yoga class in my building.  So basically, I was kind of boring.  I made all of my meals.  Oh!  I figured out that the past few days, my refridgerator has been on the lowest setting, which isn't cold enough to truly refridgerate things like milk and hummus, which both went incredibly bad.  That was very aggravating, and was what led to the grocery shopping. 

However, yesterday was rather exciting.  I went on a panoramic bus tour of the city, sponsored by my lovely NYU.  It was free.  You have to love that.  I have been signing up for as many free things as humanly possible.  Not that I am totally poor, but I do enjoy not having to pay for things.  Upcoming trips to Greenwich (on Friday), Bath, Stonehenge, and Cambridge also fall into this free and sponsored by NYU category, which is awesome.

Anyways, the panoramic bus tour was great!  Our tour guide, Ian, and our bus driver, Mo, took us around to many of the sights of the city.  Ian seemed preoccupied with showing us every American themed landmark possible.  It turns out that within London, there are five statues of U.S. Presidents- JFK, Eisehower, FDR, Washington and Lincoln.  Now I also know where the US Embassy is, which I probably should have known since day one... but I know it now and haven't needed it, so it is alright.

We made three actual stops on the tour.  First, we went to the Albert Memorial- a monument that I might not have ever seen if I was left to my own devices.  But it was stunningly beautiful.  It is a memorial to Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort (aka husband).

 

 

The next place we stopped was Buckingham Palace!  I wasn't expecting to get to see this yet.  The Queen was not in but the beefeaters were outside, guarding.  The Palace was quite spectacular.  I do plan to go back, so that I can see the Queen's Gallery as well, but this was at least a little taste.  There was a WWII era movie being filmed on the grounds, which was pretty nifty.  This was all quite a pleasant surprise.

 

 

 

 

Next stop was St. Paul's Cathedral, which has the second largest dome in the world!  Once again, we did not go in.  I'm planning to come back here and really see it later.