London Trip Part 2

So I recently put up a post telling you all about day 1 of my trip to London with my sister (which you can read here), and today I will be telling you all about day 2. We spent the 2nd day of our trip being tourists so this is going to be a pretty picture heavy post! After a little bit of a lie-in (we were both exhausted) we got ourselves ready and then managed to figure out the tube system, which I have to say, didn't take a lot of figuring out, and was extremely handy.

We decided that our first destination for the day would be Buckingham Palace. Originally we were going to do this on the Saturday night, but then we agreed that we wanted to watch the Changing of the Guard. I would definitely recommend the Changing of the Guard when in London, though be warned: There is a lot of standing while waiting for things to actually get started, and if you want a good spot you have to be there early.

After the Changing of the Guard we enjoyed the gorgeous morning by walking along the Mall and then on to Trafalgar Square before taking a short break to enjoy our surroundings. The next time I am in London I will have to go to The National Museum as we decided we didn't have time for that on this trip.

After Trafalgar Square we walked along to St Paul's Cathedral, which turned out to be quite a long walk. St Paul's Cathedral was absolutely gorgeous and I really wish we would have went in, as I love to see inside Cathedrals. When we reached St Paul's, it unfortunately had started to rain. I was very proud as I was actually prepared for once and proceeded to take out my brand new umbrella and put it up... just for it to break after a minute. Such a fail. Since neither of us fancied getting soaked we hopped onto the tube and got off at the Monument. The Monument is for the Great Fire of London, and was something I really wanted to see. At this point the rain had stopped so we decided to do the Riverside Walk towards the Tower of London.

We didn't go into the Tower of London (yet another thing I have to do the next time I'm in London), and instead decided to do a Thames Cruise. We decided on the Circular Cruise which allowed you to see 45 landmarks in 45 minutes. It was a really great Cruise which I would definitely recommend as we got to see so many landmarks that we probably wouldn't have seen otherwise. Unfortunately on the way back it started to rain again but this time it was heavy rain so we had to go inside the boat. When we arrived back at the Tower Pier the rain had got worse and we had to take cover in Pret-a-Manger as neither of us had anything to cover ourselves with.

Due to the heavy rain, we abandoned my plan to walk along the Southbank and instead took the tube straight to Westminster at which point the rain had again stopped. We quickly saw Big Ben, Westminster and Downing Street before taking the tube back to the hotel were I was very happy to jump into a hot shower and get ready for dinner.

For dinner we headed to the Hard Rock Cafe, which was very busy but very delicious. The staff were so friendly and we had a great chat with the guy who was serving us. After dinner we stayed for a few drinks before walking back to the hotel were we quickly passed out from exhaustion.

So there you have it, my tourist-filled 2nd day in London. Check back in a few days for my post about the next day in London!