Up nice and early to get to the London Eye by 10am as we already had tickets for that boarding time. Pretty amazing views. And quite amazing how many landmarks and buildings we could recognise even though neither of us had ever been to London before. Also gave us a good idea of where all the places we wanted to go to are in relation to each other. However, it was a little offputting to see a couple of workers get into each pod as people got off with those long poles with mirrors on the end of them checking to see if anything (bombs I suppose) had been left under the seats. So in Paris one is walking around next to soldiers with machine guns and in London it's people looking for bombs. Yuck to both of those things and double yuck to the nasty people who make that sort of stuff necessary!
Next stop was Tower Bridge. I loved going across the walkway along the top of it from one tower to the other. They had a photographic exhibition along this walkway of other famous bridges throughout the world. It was a bit exciting to recognise the bridges I've been on (Pont Neuf and Pont Alexandre III in Paris and, of course, Sydney Harbour Bridge) and also a couple of bridges in places like Avignon and Nimes that I will get to see in real life before I go home.
Then the Tower of London to see the Crown Jewels. Although I knew the various crowns had rather large precious gems on them it was still eye-popping to actually see them. And the amount and size of the gold things like plates, goblets and jugs! There was a gold punchbowl the size of a large birdbath (and much more ornate). It started to rain while we were there - perhaps most amazing of all it was a lovely sunny day until about 2pm. But we didn't care about the rain as we were on our way to Harrods for High Tea.
We had a reservation for High Tea at 4.30pm so time for a little bit of shopping first. I did see a throw rug I really liked but it would have broken the 'no big things' part of my shopping rule. That's why I didn't buy it. Or it may have been the £2499 price tag! I did buy a copy of my favourite book The Secret Garden as I simply couldn't resist it even though I do already own other copies of this book. But it was bound in lilac and purple leather (very nice) and it was a very reasonable £15.
High Tea was delicious! We had deliberately not eaten anything since breakfast (mind you, we did have a full English breakfast as it was included with our accommodation) but we couldn't eat everything. This didn't matter because they pack up your leftovers in a cute little cardboard box and put it in a Harrods bag to take with you. Later in the evening we ordered a pot of tea from room service and had our Harrods leftovers for supper.
