The Perfect Tourist

Despite my constant whining about the lack of internet on this trip to England, I have to say that I am pretty proud of our sight seeing efforts on this particular trip. We have not been staying in any towns that are particularly convienant to any of the sights we have seen but we have made a big effort to get around. Friday we arrived in Croughton, England which is a very small Royal Air Force base near London. To say this base was small doesn't describe it as accurately as the word "deserted" might but we wanted to be on an American base for the sole fact that we had some college football to watch on Saturday and Sunday. Friday evening we took it easy, enjoyed some not so great pizza from the "Croughton Crust", had a few beers and hit the hay. Saturday morning we were up and at 'em at about 7:00am for our day trip into London. The morning started off a bit rough as Deaner was stung by a bee while trying to put in his contacts but after a few minutes of cursing he was a pretty good sport, despite his swollen arm. We drove to the end of the tube line and hopped on a train to London! When we arrived at the Westminster station I couldn't believe our luck with the weather. It was clear and the skies were blue. I have been to London before and I am pretty sure this was NOT how the weather was! Here are a few shots I took right when we arrived.
We had already decided that we would ride on the London Eye first thing. I really wanted to go on the Eye the first time I was in London but of course, it was closed for the entire month for maintenance while I was there. I wasn't as unlucky this time! There wasn't that long of a line and it was sunny!!I loved it! I'm not sure I would do it again because I am pretty sure once is all you need to get the idea, but it was really neat and Deaner enjoyed it too. Afterwards it was already almost noon and we knew that we really needed to step on it if we wanted to get to see everything. We knew we had to leave London about 5:30pm to be back in time for the Georgia game so we did what we normally would never do and jumped on a big red double decker tour bus!! It turned out to be one of the most fantastic things we could have done!! The weather was beautiful, our tour guide was funny, and we got to see everything in London in under 3 hours. I would highly recommend something like this if you only have one day in the city. It was great!The National Gallery, St. Martin's in the Fields and Trafalgar Square.......St. Paul's Cathedral....Tower Bridge.....Picadilly Circus......Marble Arch......I stayed near this area on my first visit to London.And last but not least, our final stop on our tour was Buckingham Palace. We got off the bus tour here and walked around a bit before getting the tube back to our car.And finally, Deaner on our walk back to the tube station....All and all the trip was a lot of fun. We made it back in plenty of time to watch UGA vs Oklahoma State. I don't really want to discuss the outcome but it was fun watching football with my husband, eating frozen pizzas in our hotel room and drinking coronas. We couldn't be happier that college football is back. It's just that time change is a real pain.....Tomorrow I will post about Stonehenge and Menwith Hill but for now it is time to get off because the internet is running slowly and my computer only has 27 minutes of power left (I left the cord back in our room and the internet is only working in the common area!). More tomorrow! I'm ready to get back to Germany for sure!!