London day 2

So the next day in London was packed FULL of things to do. We started out the day heading to Middlesex University in North London to register for the British medical boards which I am going to take in a few months. After grabbing some lunch, we checked out of the hotel and headed to see some of London's sights!

We headed first to Buckingham Palace, home of the Queen of England. We spotted some "Bobby's," otherwise known as British policemen....And then stared at the palace through the gates.... There really wasn't anything special about it...
AND I saw the Queen's royal guard! Usually they wear red but today they were wearing grey...
Next we headed to The Tower of London. Now it is not really a tower, but more of a castle where the first kings of England set up shop, and where the queens crown jewels are...There were more royal guards there guarding her crown jewels....
Also right outside of the Tower of London is the Tower Bridge. This is not London Bridge, but the Tower Bridge....
I tried on some old fashioned hats...
Next we headed to the river Thames to get on a ferry down to Parliment and the London Eye.
Along the way we passed London Bridge...
Which was not anything special.

Then we came up upon the London Eye...
Which is the biggest ferris wheel I have ever seen in my life! I think it is the biggest in the world. It was not time to ride it yet though. We had Parliment and Big Ben to head to...
As we approached Big Ben...It was clear that Parliment and Big Ben were beautiful! Such amazing architecture....
We then went into Parliment where they had arguments taking place. We had to check all of our electronics so we could not take pictures. We watched some arguments taking place. It was quite entertaining. Each person gets 6 minutes to talk and it goes from one side of the room to the other. Each side is a different party. There were snide comments and screams from the other sides during everyone's arguments or speech. Much more fun to watch than C-Span.

Then it was to the Eye, which I was the most excited about. It is a gigantic ferris wheel with these egg shaped pods that you go into. It takes 30 minutes to complete a full revolution. It gets very high up about 440 feet I believe. The pods rotate as the wheel rotates so you always have an unobstructed view.

Here is after we just got on and they closed the door...
Here is a view of the pod in front of us so you can see what they look like....
Here is the pod that was behind us and the view while we were nearly at the top...
A view of London...
A look at the wheel when we were at the halfway point....
Another London view....
Me looking out...
Me in the London Eye....
After the eye, we headed back to the hotel to get our bags, and it was back on a train to Manchester. We rode a Virgin train, which is the same company that has Virgin airlines, Virgin mobile, records, galactic, etc.... The train was another fast one and we got back to Manchester in 2 hours. We got in at about 11pm and had a flight the next day for Spain 7 hours later! We decided to stay up all night and pack and catch up on things instead of sleeping. I will tell you all about Spain in my next post!