Wednesday morning we headed out via the famous London tube system to the British Library gaze upon the Magna Carta. Upon gazing it looked like this.
From there we went to the British museum and looked at a lot of old stuff.
Thursday was the big Flower show. This was a thing that went on all week and is apparently a really big deal. King Chuck King of England spent Monday there. There was maybe 1/2 to 1 mile long street with booths of people selling flower stuff. There were a number of competition show gardens and a big building with another huge quantity of flower stuff. Heading into the big show.
One of the displays was from a guy that spent an awful amount of time carving trees and apparently trying to sell them.
One aspect of this show was to demonstrate that middle age and old English women are world class at elbowing their way through crowds to get where they want. Around the show gardens the crowds would be 5 or 6 deep and these ladies would get right up front in no time. From this picture about 80% of the way down the main street you can see some of these women with their armed elbows.
The big time winning Japanese garden had this weird big wall of growing things that no one is quite sure how they did it but it was quite soft.
We spent most the day there and were quite tired when we were done.
Today we did one of the hop on hop off bus things to get us around all of London. This is not the bus.
Our bus was like the
one on the left.
We wondered around the Trafalgar square house of parliament area. This shot like maybe 100000 others taken today from the bridge over the Thames by all the other tourists that were there.
Looking to your right you have this view of the river and the Eye of London.
Ol’ Big Jim Bob (or what ever the name is) has a lot of extra doodads. And as an added benefit we were there to hear it strike 12.
About 3 blocks away is the square where we took the opportunity to have some genuine fish and chips.
The view out of the window.
This from 1 bridge up river is the last we saw of central London.
Our final stop of the day was Buckingham Palace. I thought that I finally might meet up with King Chuck King of England but when we got there only tourists were in attendance. The palace itself is just this big building that apparently we were not allowed to enter.
It does have a nice gate to keep us commoners out.
Out front they had a big statue thing with this golden thing on top. Don’t know if it is anyone famous.
Since we were only about a half mile from the hotel through a, as they say here, lovely park we started back to the hotel through it. We found a bench part way and had a sit to soak up some sun and watch people.
I looked around and thought “holy crap is that Mr. and Mrs. King Chuck King of England?” I thought about it and decided it most likely was not because they were not wearing the hats with all the diamonds and stuff on them.
So, with London done tomorrow it is off to Scotland. I’ve decided not to try to go to the source of the Smith clan as 1. its about a 4 hour drive, on the wrong side of the road, and would take too much brain power, and 2. the town itself appears from Google street view to be a cross road with 4 or 5 houses going off in each direction and no sign of a cemetery to look for dead relatives. I’m sure we will find something to look at.