After having our continental breakfast at the hotel (not too shabby by the way) we walked over to King's Cross to look more into the situation. Basically no trains were running, and the ones that were packed! Luckily the majority of the work crowd had cleared off by that point, but it was still busy! We chose to get a taxi due to our lack of knowledge of the bus lines and the ridiculous amount of time and energy it would take to walk all the way to our first destination, Westminster Abbey. The taxi line was ridiculous, it bended all the way past the 4 rows of the line up area designated to it and went half way down the walkway into the station. The line was very long and was made up of very angry looking people with ugly expressions on their face, yelling into their phones whilst holding suitcases. We decided that we might head back over to the fake platform 9&3/4 that we had found the other day and take some pictures :) Unfortunately there was construction taking place around the photos, so they're not as good as they could be, but oh well :)
Anyways, we headed back to the line for the taxi's to see had decreased by about a 5th. It wasn't great, but it was better than nothing. We waited in line for a while, but not really too long, between about 10 and 15 minutes. We hopped in a traditional style London taxi... but with some not so traditonal advertising and headed over to Westminster. The cabby was a really nice man :) He had a nice general chat with us about the city of London, a few stories about some celebrities he's driven (btw Sean Connery, is apparently one to stear clear of...) and we told him a bit about Australia. During the drive we even got to see the Horse Guards at the Whitehall :) It was a lovely chat/drive and before we new it we had a arrived at Westminster Abbey.
This place is honestly one of the beautiful places I've ever been in my life. It was marvelous. Now for anyone who doesn't know what this place is, it's basically a resting-place of Britian's monarchs and has been the setting for all the coronations since 1066. Some of you might think it's a bit morbid, but anyone who is familiar with the architecture of the churches here in Europe knows what I mean. The architecture of this church in particular is an example of medieval architecture and it was marvelous!
Out of respect and also not to damage the quality of the paintings etc. photos were not allowed to be taken inside, which I thought was completely understandable. Have a look at some pictures/info/history on it at http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history it's definately worth a look.
The experience we had at Westminster Abbey was one I'll never forget. We were given a free audio guide that talked you through the whole place, going into detail about the main areas and people. You get to walk past the crypts of many of the royal in the church, such as Elizabeth I and her sister Mary, who are burried together, Henry VII and his wife, Edward the Contessor as well as a lot of other monarchs. There were many other people buried there or at least commemorated through some sort of plaque or monument.
There was a specific place called poets corner, that includes the crypts or memorials of poets, writers, musicians, actors etc. such as William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters and a whole heap of other people. Throughout the place people are buried everywhere, in the floor, the walls, just everywhere. The building is sooo unbelievably beautiful and still in such good condition. Westminster Abbey by the way, is where Princess Diana's funeral took place. There is so much I could say about Westminster, but I would be here forever! So have a look at the website and have a look at some of the pictures etc :)
We then headed over to the houses of parliament, which is located really close to the Abbey. So we had a bit of a walk over there and took a few photos of the massive building. By the way, this makes parliament house in Australia look rather pathetic. For those of you who aren't aware of what this building looks like, think about the scene in Harry Potter 5, when the Order of the Pheonix were flying next to this magnificent looking building next to a river....well that was the houses of parliament. (You can see it here for a brief second on the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKC0W3mF1wA ) As you can see in the photo below, the famous Big Ben is a part of the building and was just as magnificent as you would assume it would be. Sam in particular was looking forward to seeing Big Ben, so he was very pleased :)
As you can see from the photo above, the Westminster bridge was right near the Houses of Parliament. From the bridge we could see a great view of the London Eye, along with the other more industrial side of London.
We decided that despite the distance we would walk from Westminster all the way to Buckingham Palace and then head over to the marble arch. The walk up to the palace seemed to last forever but it was worth it :) The palace was beautiful! But we all agreed that it didn't have the same grandeur as the Abbey. The guards were rather amusing, and we had the pleasure of watching them do a guard change. Unfortunately the Queen wasn't polite enough to come out and say hi.
We then walked towards the Marble Arch. Now this was not a short walk and a rather painful one for me as my back had started playing up again, but we made it. On the walk we got a chance to look at the wealthier areas of London and walk past a whole heap of fancy-smancy car dealerships. Understandably, the boys enjoyed this part of the walk and took a few photos of some of the cars.
When we reached the Arch, we were more fascinated with the amount of pigeons that inhabited the area, than the arch itself, but nonetheless it was very beautiful. Just by the way, the pigeons here are ridiculous, they're like rats with wings. But anyway, we took a few happy snaps and headed down Oxford St.
By this point we still hadn't had lunch and it was around 3:30pm, so we were keen for a warm place to sit down, eat and have a bit of a rest. We walked up the street for a fair while and still hadn't found anywhere other than Maccas, which we really weren't interested in. We were desperate so we headed into a large and expensive department store called Selfridges, which we knew would have somewhere to eat. As we walked through the designer brand clothes, bags and perfumes, feeling very much like street urchins in comparison to the Barbie doll like sales people, we finally located a restaurant on the top floor. We looked at the menu and as we had expected, it was a tad pricy, but Mum and Dad decided that we'd treat ourselves to something nice.
We were seated on the table next to two french women, baring Louis Vitton handbags and Prada and Dior shopping bags, who were speaking french. We felt just a tad out of place. Mum and I ordered a nice mushroom risotto, Sam had chicken nugget type things and Dad had garlic prawns. The meals were all very nice, Dad's of course was too small for him, but we all enjoyed having a break from walking and being somewhere warm.
We then left to go look for a cinema to go and see Harry Potter, but unfortunately the next showing was in 2 hours, so we decided to head back to the hotel and have a restful evening after a long day. Due to the underground strike we had to take a taxi, but again we had a lovely cabby :) He told us that his wife owns a property over in Redcliffe in Qld, which we thought was pretty cool haha.
So, after a long day we finally got home and pretty much just crashed, ready for London, day 3.
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