Oh The Places We Will Go

Today, we had the opportunity to explore London on our own and it proved to be quite the adventure. As a group of four, Laura, Ellie, Maegan and I began our enterprise at Buckingham Palace to observe the changing of the guard. It was a spectacular and claustrophobic sight. We were lucky enough to get a spot right against the railing and were able to see the royal guards exit the palace five feet in front of us. I was unable to clearly see what I was photoing and therefore I continuously snapped a total of over 150 pictures-clearly I have some editing to do tonight! I was grateful that Laura was behind me acting as my personal bodyguard so that I was not bumped by the crowd as I photographed. We left the palace with many interesting stories of the people around us.

Leaving the palace with a rush of “crowd-fighting” adrenaline, we took the underground over to the Victoria and Albert museum. Here we were able to look at the different historical art and fashions of England. While I found the display items very interesting and wondered about the people who were involved in the creation and use of the various display items, I enjoyed the British Museum (which the four of us had visited the evening before) more.

After leaving the VA Museum we then wandered through the streets of Chelsea, eventually finding our way to Harrods. I was amazed. We saw stockings and scarves that we “on sale” for fifty pounds. I was definitely out of my element in that store. Surprisingly, Ellie managed to find a nice tin within her price range and now has the honor of saying that she has bought something at Harrods.

Running out of money and energy, we then stopped at an Indian restaurant near our hotel for dinner and Laura, Ellie, and I hopped back on the Underground to take a tour of Jack the Ripper. Due to train delays and not exactly knowing where we were going, we missed the tour. I was devastated. I had been waiting for this tour since leaving Columbus and have been faithfully reading about Jack the Ripper for the past few weeks. Not knowing what else to do, we again got on the “tube” to go back to the hotel. However, the adventure did not end there. Shortly after the train started, it stopped. There was some trouble on the tracks and our train had to sit, in the dark tunnel, until the problem was fixed. A good five minutes later, we did start moving again only to stop for another three or four minutes at Liverpool Street where we decided to abandon that train and take the Central Line. At last, we made it back to the hotel where we called and successfully rescheduled our Jack tour for Friday and called it a night-looking forward to visiting Dover tomorrow.