London Day 2

Well as it turned out we were too tired to watch a movie last night. It was dinner and into bed early. Which is good since we were up and at it again at 5:30 this morning. We are a little, emphasis on little, more organized this morning.  Our plan for the day is to grab another nice breakfast at the hotel, tour London in an open top double decker bus, go to Borough Market for lunch then later find a pub for a dinner of fish & chips. Yesterday, a woman gave us her ticket for the bus tour. She said she bought it before she realized she wouldn't have time to use it. That was incredibly nice of her. The cool thing about the bus is we can get on and off at any of the stops over a two day period. So we can do more in depth exploring if we wish. We'll see how our plan plays out. 

First we had to have breakfast. Did I mention it's complimentary?  Today's buffet was even better than yesterday. They added sausage and country potatoes to the menu. I must have eaten well because I felt full for the first time since we left San Diego. Did I mention breakfast was complimentary? 

After breakfast we headed out. On our way out we saw all the courtesy cars lined up for the people here for the pro tennis championships. When we checked in they let us know they couldn't give us the room we expected because they were prioritizing the players and support people from the tournament.  I was surprised the tournament was such a big deal. I didn't know anyone still watched tennis. But I digress. We caught The Original Tours sightseeing bus at Trafalgar Square. These are big double decker busses. The upper deck is open. The first thing we noticed was it was cold! Being in England we had no choice but to bundle up and carry on. The bus took us throughout all of London and the surrounding areas. We had seen many of the sights yesterday. We also saw sights like Hyde Park, the Duke of Wellingtons first home, the Tower Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral and the Tower of London for the first time. 

We hopped off the buss near the borough of Southwark, an upscale area southeast of London. Southwark is the home of Borough Market. The largest market in the London area. We wandered through this massive farmers market for about two hours. We enjoyed the best toasted cheese sandwich ever and bought a baguette, cheese and prosciutto ham for dinner in the room.

After the market we walked over to the Tower bridge. We came across some really cool areas along the River Thames.  Just across the bridge is the Tower of London, where the Crown Jewels are keep.  Oh, also a whole bunch of people were imprisoned, tortured and killed. We spent well over an hour exploring there. We were shocked at how big the place is. I thought the Tower of London was just a medieval prison tower. Turns out it was a royal residence that happened to be used as a prison. When you look from the outside it is very deceiving. The only down side was it was super crowded. The line to see the jewels was huge. So we passed on that and went into the White Tower. White Tower is the main structure at the center of the compound. It was super crowded and once you're in you have to work your way all the way through. We started to feel like the prisoners of old thinking we would never get out.

 

We finally escaped the tower and waleked over to All Hallows by the Tower. It was of interest because it is the church in which John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the United States, was married. How's that for a little trivia? We were pretty wiped out so we didn't go in to look around. 

We'd had enough sightseeing for one day so we got back on the tour bus and headed back to to home base at the Marriott. All in all it was a great day. I have new appreciation for London. It is a beautiful city with beautiful, interesting architecture and historically significant buildings on almost every corner. 

Tomorrow is Sunday and we haven't decided what we are going to do. We'll let you know when we decide.