For our second Saturday in London, our program scheduled a free city bus tour to allow us to see London's most famous sights. The tour was pretty early in the morning and since we were meeting in Central London, us Southeast Londoners had to get up even earlier to make it there on time... except we didn't. We had to wait 20 minutes for a train to Central London and once we made it to the tube it was already time for us to be at the tour's meeting point. Everyone here stresses punctuality, because if a tour is supposed to leave at 10am, it's going to be gone by 10am. In America, we always wait for everyone to arrive even if they're really late! We were so nervous that the tour bus was going to leave without us. When we got to the road where we were meeting, only 3 minutes late, we saw a tour bus drive past us. Thinking we had missed it, we all started panicking until we saw a group of students getting onto a different bus farther down the street. Although we were a little late and had to run as fast as we could through the tube station to get there, we made it just in time! Oh, and I forgot to mention, after the bus tour we were leaving for a weekend trip to Wales, so our friends had huge suitcases that they had to run with. Now our lesson is definitely learned. Never be late in the UK! After hurriedly getting on the double decker bus we drove past Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Harrods, and several of London's museums.
We even got to ride across Tower Bridge and since being here I've wanted to cross it! The bus also made a few stops. Our first stop was at the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens. The memorial was Queen Victoria's tribute to her husband who had died 11 years before.
After taking a few pictures we got back on the bus for our next stop: Buckingham Palace. Tara and I hadn't seen Buckingham Palace yet so we were really excited. What was even better was that once we got there our tour guide told us in a few minutes the changing of the guard ceremony would take place!
It was just by chance that we arrived right in time to see the ceremony. Seeing the changing of the guard was definitely something I had wanted to do, but it doesn't occur every day at the palace, and if it does, it only happens at 11am. Before coming to London, I was also told that the palace grounds get extremely crowded at that time and it would be hard to see much of anything. However, our tour guide knew exactly where we should stand to have the best view of the guards walking by, whereas most tourists stand at Buckingham Palace's front. She instead led us to a road a little farther from the palace and we were all a little confused as to why we were walking away from the crowd. She knew what she was doing though! A few minutes later, the current guards started leaving the palace and were marching right in front of our eyes. If I had reached my hand out, I would have been able to touch them we were that close!
After the changing of the old guard, the new guards start marching from the opposite direction to intersect with the old guards in front of Buckingham Palace. They then do exactly what the name implies and change guards so that the old ones get a break and the new ones begin their shift.
It was really cool to see something that is such a huge tradition in London. After a fun day seeing most of London, we had to quickly catch a train to Cardiff, Wales! More on that trip next!
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