London day 1

 we have arrived in London

 Fat tire bike tour

  Big Ben

 the queen's car

 Buckingham Palace

 vanishing telephone booths

 shopping at Harrods

Hi everyone this is Emily again! We arrived in London this morning an hour late due to technical issues with the plane before we left. We still arrived with enough time to get to our planned activities of the day. First we dropped our bags off at the hotel, changed, and grabbed a quick bite to eat before our 4 and 1/2 hour bike tour of London with Fat Tire tours. We went all over the middle part of the city. We saw the London eye, Buckingham palace (includng the changing of the guards ceremony), memorials of princess Diana and other past members of the royal family, as well as the places that the different parts of the royal family live. Today happened to be the opening of a new WWII memorial, to commemorate the Royal Air force bombers squads. The queen was right near us, but we didn't get to see her. Because of this ceremony we saw fighter jets and a bomber that dropped poppies over the gardens. It was quite amazing. We stopped for lunch at a pub near the memorial for a past naval leader. There we had traditional English food. Dad ate toad in the hole which is Yorkshire pudding and sausage. Mom had pie with meat and mushrooms. I had a caesar salad. When we got back from our bike tour we got ice cream and a big glass of water before heading to the showers and taking a well needed nap. When we woke up we went for dinner at a Thai restaurant recommended by our tour guide. After dinner we walked pretty far to Harrod's, a very high end, gigantic department store. We were too tired to walk all the way back to our hotel, so we took a traditional English taxi back. We are trying to fall asleep now, if we can with the rattling noise that apparently maintenance was supposed to fix last week! Looking forward to another exciting day in London and our flight to Bordeaux to see Anne and her dad Antoine!