What a day. Got up at 7:00am. When I first heard my alarm it sounded so familiar I forgot I was here.  I opened my eyes and thought wow I am in London. London, that's in England where the Queen is.  And she is actually in residence right now as per our guide. When the guards are outside the residence downtown she is there. Apparently she has never lived at Buckingham palace. She considers that her work place.  Our first real stop was in fact Buckingham Palace. We wanted to watch the changing of the guards.  The crowds were huge.  I saw very little of the guards but did catch the parade going in and out. I was amazed by the Bobbies on horseback. They were shouting " please keep your belongings close as we have thieves and pick pockets here, I am afraid".  It made me think of Oliver Twist.  

So much of this place reminds me of the movies I saw as a kid.  The pigeons in the park I heard"feed the birds ... " from Mary Poppins in my head.  

We found Big Ben. I almost missed it.  Not sure how that could have been.  It is an amazing sight. We got lucky and heard it dong 2:00. Man I would hate to be up there when it dongs the hour as I am sure you could here for miles.

We were off to the boat cruise of the Thanes River. I went under London Bridge. It is not as impressive as I expected but London tower bridge does impress. It has the most beautiful towers.

I loved the little stories. Did you know that the lion heads on the river wall were placed for flood watch. When the waters reach the lions mouth they would say "the lions are drinking, London is flooding". And then the police would send out warnings

Or why the Green Park had a name change and there are no flowers beds there. Or why are there fancy W and cc on the lamp posts. Well stay tuned. I will be trying to post pictures and answer these tomorrow night.  I need to look up a couple details to make sure I have it all correct as my notes are all over the tourist map. I need to invest in a pad of paper

So much to tell. But it's midnight. We have an early bus tomorrow so to be continued ......