The royal day in London

Day 2

Part I: Royal Guard
I woke up, as per usual, pretty early on the second day. I went and had breakfast solo… as is becoming the norm on my life on the other continent. Showered and ready to tackle the day, we headed out to see if we could catch the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. Here I am at the ceremony with my 10,000 closest friends:





Part II: The Royal dead
After climbing the fence of the palace to get a view (and almost being crushed by the tourist who climbed on top of me, then preceded to attempt to climb over the wall… I left at this point in case he got shot), we headed to Westminster Abby. I really wanted to see the gravesite of Queen Elizabeth and her sister, Mary Tudor. Also buried there is Mary Queen of Scotts, Chaucer, Darwin, and the list goes on. The church is packed with monuments and, uh, random antique crap. I felt in some way the clutter distracted from the overall beauty of one of the most famous churches, but it was amazing to see it. I can only imagine that it is hard to get buried there (um, and they might be running out of room!)



After that, we headed to catch some sushi at the pier next to the London Eye. I had a random sampling of the sushi platter- tuna, salmon, shrimp, sweet shrimp, red snapper, etc, miso soup, some good black seaweed looking salad, green tea, sake (raspberry flavored and poured into a wine glass??? WTF?) and as a free bonus, some plum wine and large scallop sushi. We could watch outside on the pier while we were eating.



Part III: The Royal Ballet
We headed back to the hotel for a fast change into evening clothes (heels and nice shirt for the ballet), and ran to meet all at dinner. The Royal Ballet was fantastic! We saw the performance of La Bayadère – ‘The Temple Dancer’.