Travel Tuesday

Here was the itinerary--we cram as much as we can in to our vacations--all the things we saw, found or toured--I'm going to break it up as there are almost 500 photos for me to go through and organize--many will be deleted. Certainly, I'll be sharing only a select few!

Thursday: Our flight was late getting in, so we had to modify our plans.

Kensington Palace--we didn't really love this self-guided tour. Low on our list of palaces. We just didn't think it was all that interesting. We did agree, that maybe we're getting sort of tired of touring houses!

Ye Olde Mitre Pub (2nd oldest in London operating continuously since 1546). We stopped here and had a drink. Plus it's a block from the church we had planned to go to for Mass on Sunday.

Walked around Covent Garden
Dinner at Prima Sapori d' Italia--really good Italian food---not fancy at all.

Friday:
We had breakfast every morning at our hotel. They had a really nice spread with just about everything you could want.

Old entrance to London near St. Pauls and our hotel.

Tyburn Tree marker where most of the hangings took place.

K2 Telephone Booth---first phone booth in the original location

Embassy of Texas marker---way back before Texas was a state, it was a republic and had an embassy in London.

St. James Palace--this is not open to the public, but the park behind it is.

Smallest police station--located in Trafalgar Square. It's kind of sad---they're using it like some sort of janitor's broom closet now. Still, it's pretty cute. It's called the Lilliputian police station.

Twinings---of course I had to buy tea. I asked if they did a commemorative tea for Harry and Megan. They did, but it was sold out soon after the wedding. Instead, I got "The Strand" which is the street that Twinings is located on.

Temple Church

 Great Fire monument at Leadenhall Market

Leadenhall Market---we had wine and cheese for lunch. One of the cheeses was called "stinky bishop"---and it was. I didn't like it at all. It tasted like dead fish---not that I've ever tasted that, but like dead fish smell! When I asked the waitress what it was called, she asked if I liked it. Since I said that I didn't care for it, she brought us two others of her favorites. They were both good. We enjoyed sitting outside and people watching. We noticed that most of the business men still wear suits. Butch noticed that the older men wore ties, while the younger men wore open collars with their suits. This was fun and we would definitely do it again!

Old London Wall--I wanted to take Butch to the area where last September my friends and I just happened upon the old wall. This is what we found, but it was clearly marked.

 When I was with my friends, we happened upon this.

I tried to find this exact area, but couldn't. I wasn't really sure how far from out hotel we were. Still, I thought it was pretty exciting to just happen upon something so old and significant.

 Down the street from our hotel, we went to the Blackfriars Pub---really old.

 We shared the fish and chips. I really like the mushy peas---just smashed peas.

This is what goes on outside ALL the pubs. These old pubs are really small. So, everyone stands outside with their drinks. It was the most amazing sight to me---all these people standing around--and not just on Friday night---every night!

Okay, I'm going to stop here. Since I am still limping along with my computer, the hardest thing to deal with are pictures. They just don't cooperate. As a result, this post has taken forever. That's why I'm going to break this up in to smaller bits.

Anyway, this was just the first day and a half, so now you know why I was so tired!!!