Saturday I met with a group of friends at Waterloo Station..main train/tube station in Central. It is a good meeting points because we can all take trains into Waterloo from where we are staying. We decided to meet early (9 am) so we could attempt to get tickets for Buckingham Palace. The Palace closed on October 3rd since the Queen would be on her way back. After a short stroll through St. James Park where the chipmunks would come up to you and you could pet them, we made our way to the Palace to find a long line, err I mean..queue. We were unable to buy tickets online since they were sold out, so waiting in the queue was our only option. It went fairly quick and we were able to get tickets for later in the afternoon. I could go on forever about how gorgeous and extravagant the Palace was, but it would become monotonous. I thought it was also cool that as an added bonus they had Cait Middleton's dress on display from the wedding earlier this year. Along with a whole extra wedding exhibit.
We decided to take a stroll through Hyde Park until it was time for our tour. This little stroll turned into walking through the WHOLE park looking for the other part of the group who opted not to go to the Palace since they had gone earlier in the week. Hyde Park was gorgeous. It was nice walking by the water and throughout the various gardens. They also had a nice memorial fountain dedicated to Princess Diana.
It was about lunchtime but since I had half eaten half fed to the ducks/chipmunks my deliciously awkwardly tasting jam and chocolate spread sandwich, I decided to stop and get a burger. I don't know if the sandwich was good or if I was just hungry which is why I ate it. It sounded so appetizing when I had made it before I left! After annihilating the burger, we stopped by the Museum of Natural History. It was cool to see the exhibits.
Four of us parted and went to the Buckingham Palace tour, but after met up with the other three. So after walking around for about an hour trying to decide where to eat, I think we stopped and read the menu's on about 50 or more places and had been walking nonstop since 9am, I was a little frustrated. I decided to wander down this side street and I read a menu and saw something I liked so I declared it was where I was eating and if others wanted to join, they could. Well, everyone did. So it was nice to have dinner and relax. We were not planning on staying into the night, but since it was getting dark out, we decided to head over by the London Eye and Big Ben. It was awesome to see everything lit up at night. I will upload some pictures for sure. It wasn't until about 9:30pm that we caught a train back into Kingston. Such a long, but fun day! We ended up meeting up with people in Kingston and relaxing for a bit longer, sharing stories and memories from the day, before we parted our own ways for the nights.
That's all for now.
-Nick
