Sister Visit and London - Day 3

On the third day, we ate breakfast at the hotel again (they had a decent hot and cold buffet), and then we were ready for another full day of tourism.

I actually learned from past disappointments, and preordered tickets from home for the Tower of London. We still had to queue to get in, but the line moved fairly quickly.

Once we got in, it was packed. We didn't join any tours, but just wandered at our own pace.

We walked along the wall, and went inside some of the turrets.

Recreation of a royal room of King Edward I

The Ravens

A model of the Tower

Down in the courtyard, there was some sort of historical reenactment going on. We watched a bit, but all I gathered was that it was some sort of trial.

We also caught a glimpse of The Keys, an exclusive onsite pub for Beefeaters and their guests.

We also had a nice view of Tower Bridge.

The kids were starting to get restless, so we decided to get in line to see the crown jewels.

This was taken from the end of the queue

It was quite a wait, and unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures inside (which didn't stop everyone, but we followed the rules). Besides the crowns and scepters, there were various other items used in royal ceremonies and parties. Everything was stunning, and Lily especially loved it.

After the crown jewels, we had to get pictures with the Beefeaters, and we wandered around a bit more.

Traitors gate

Another view of Tower Bridge

About this time, we decided that it was time to get the kids out and have lunch. We walked outside to find taxis, and Lesa hailed one right away. Matt and I tried waving several down, but it was a good 10 minutes before we had any success.

Trying to flag down a taxi

We met up again at Borough Market, which has existed in some form since the 11th century. We stopped in a tapas restaurant for lunch, and the food was delicious.

Spanish Tortilla

Patatas bravas and black rice

Fried goat's cheese with honey

Black teeth from the rice

After our tapas, we wandered around the market, which had shops and food stalls, restaurants, and street food.

Entrance to the market

Dancing

Just hanging out

Terrible picture, but this was the street food area

By this point of the day, the kids were very energetic. We found a nearby playground on Google maps, and let the kids run wild for a long time.

By now it was late afternoon, and we were all tired, but we pressed on to do a quick tour of the sites we had missed due to the race the previous day.

First stop, Westminster Abbey. They had just finished with the last tour, so we weren't able to go inside. We did have a nice time in the gift shop though.

We walked by the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, which is going through renovations (we did know this ahead of time though).

Another view of the Eye

That's Big Ben under the scaffolding

And we stopped in front of Buckingham Palace. All of the kids were excited to see where the Queen lives, but again it was too late to see inside.

Now we felt content with our sightseeing, and we were getting hungry and tired (not to mention it was still really hot). So we went back to the hotel and had food delivered. It was pretty late by the time we had eaten, so we threw the kids in bed and packed up for our train ride the next morning.

One more pic with the Eye

A cool building we drove past. It looked 2 dimensional.

This trip was much more packed than our typical holidays, but there's so much we still didn't get to see. It was exhausting, but a lot of fun, and I couldn't wait to take my sister's family to see where we live.