A Horse and Carriage to Tower Bridge

July 23rd, 2015

We wanted to try to see the Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace but after looking this up online many people said it was too crowded and turns out to be an awful experience. Instead, many people had suggested going to the Horse Guards Parade to watch the changing of those guards. We arrived to a much smaller crowd than would have been at the Palace and had a good view of the back of horses. We watched them change the guards and then sit for a good twenty minutes, before more horses arrived and they rode off. A bit anticlimactic but still interesting to see such a long-standing tradition, that occurs every day here. Side note, the changing of the guard became a tradition when Queen Victoria found that her guards were drunk and gambling and needed to be inspected every day.

We went to the nearby Churchill War Rooms and took a tour of the underground rooms where he directed the war.  They did a great job of preserving it as a time capsule since it seems nothing had been literally been touched since the end of the war.

For lunch, we grabbed sandwiches and sat in St. James Park. It was a beautiful day and this park was the perfect spot to relax for a bit. Then, we headed to the Royal Mews to see the Royal cars and carriages. It was interesting to learn about the maintenance of these vehicles and see how long some of them have been used. It was also fun to see the Queen’s jubilee carriage, that we have seen so many times on television, in person.

Next, we headed for the Tower Bridge exhibit on the upper level of the bridge. They have glass panels in the floors and we were there when a boat was crossing so we were able to watch the bridge lift below us; it was a very unique view. The Tower Bridge represents to England what the Brooklyn Bridge represents to us, and it was great to see how they told the story of building it. We also were able to see the old steam engines and pistons that use to raise the bridge, beautiful machines.

We had heard that Indian food in London was great so we found a highly rated place and headed there for dinner. We were a bit surprised as it is not the same type of restaurant we are used to on Devon. It was very modern and hipster. We ended up seated practically in the kitchen, which took away from the experience a little, but we were able to watch naan get made up close and personal at a high rate of speed by what looked like a naan master.

As part of our city passes we had a river boat-ride to use so we thought it would be a nice night for that. We headed to Greenwich by Underground to take the boat back from there, and of course by the time we got there they had stopped running. So we walked around the neighborhood a bit and headed back for the night.