London!

Last week I stuffed my suitcase and headed out on my very first trip to London (hence the silence on the blog...haven't gotten good enough to plan in advance).  I went with 23 of my friends.  Okay, not really, but there were 23 women in the group I went with.  I didn't know most of them before we left, but by the end of the trip we were all friends and I look forward to developing relationships with each of them.
I'll do another post about the purpose behind our trip, but for now, here are some of the pictures I took on our day off for sightseeing.

My first ride on The Tube.  I was really nervous about this part, but we had a great friend with us who knew how to use it and helped us all get where we needed to go.  I've ridden the NYC Subway and this wasn't nearly as crowded.

Trafalgar Square was beautiful. They were setting up for a big event that weekend so unfortunately there were tons of fences and big screens set up.

 I thought the history behind St. James' Palace was super interesting and really quite sad (the queen it was built for was beheaded before she ever got to see it) and we were super excited to see the guards out front because it meant The Queen was in residence that day at Buckingham Palace....still a little confused as to why they would have guards at St. James' for The Queen at another location.  Silly Brits : )

Hat shop where Laurel and Hardy bought their famous hats; followed by the cigar shop where Winston Churchill bought cigars.

We made it to Buckingham Palace just in time to see the changing of the guard.  It was so cool.

 

All the architecture we saw around the city was amazing as well.  

 Westminster!!! Oh you are beautiful on the outside.  I can only imagine how beautiful you were inside.  Why weren't you open?!!!  Oh well, just another reason to go back and visit.

St. Paul's was equally beautiful outside, but again the inside was closed to visitors.  So disappointing.

Ummm...who knew the Tower of London is not actually a tower.  I didn't know.

And...this is the Tower Bridge, not the London Bridge (which is quite disappointing in comparison).  Again, a surprise.

And Big Ben is not the actual clock tower, it's a bell inside the clock tower.  London is full of surprises.

If you've actually made it to the end of this post I'm incredibly impressed.  I loved London and want to go back.  It's history is fascinating.  More details of the trip to come.