London, Day 2

This is a day that I am sure I will look back on and laugh at.

Today, one day later, I am still not laughing.

Maybe I will laugh tomorrow.

This was the day to tour the great city of London; to see it all in one day!!! We were to see all the awesome buildings throughout the city, lots of the churches, some of the castles, and neat monuments. We were going to cruise the Thames, ride the London Eye, and see the Crown Jewels. And in true, "Brett-fashion" the trip was booked and paid for. All we had to do was show up.

And show up we did. For the bus ride.

On the bus, as happy as can be. Ready to have the best tour ever!  

Some great shots from the bus! Such history in this city!

I've seen some pretty fancy court houses in the United States, but this just blows me away! 

The Tower of London Bridge: AMAZING

This is the castle built in the to enable the monarchy to control the Thames. If you had control of the Thames, you could control London. If you controlled London, you controlled all of England. 

The "Lion of England", Prince John, represented here. Also, "City Hall" from "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" can be seen in the background. 

Close-up of some guys hat, and the Bridge.

It was at this point our tour guide told us we had about 20 minutes. He asked us to meet him by a certain tree and if he was gone from that tree, to meet him down at the docs by the boat. He said we could use the toilets (not referred to as bathrooms or restrooms here) and walk around the gift shop until then. We went into the Tower of London gift shop  and we were all enamored with the fun stuff we saw! McKay ran around upstairs, and Makenna found a cute coin purse she wanted. I wanted to get an ornament for Christmas (a tradition we have) and a patch to put our family trip bag (a new tradition we want to start). So we waited in line to buy them and started walking down to the boats. There was no one by the tree.

I started walking a bit faster because I saw people loading a boat. But then I saw lots of different people in lots of different lines. I had no idea where our group was or if it was our group that I saw loading. I turned back to Brett to consult. As I did this, the boat I was watching, pulled away from the docs. I walked over to the lady and asked if she could help us find our tour group. She asked the name of our group and I told her. She looked at me and said, "You just missed the boat. The just took off."

I stood there, dumbfounded. I didn't even know what to say. There they went, sailing down the Thames. They probably didn't even know we weren't there.

I was shocked and then I felt stupid, because I should have followed my instinct to chase down that line of people. Then I got mad.

Now what were we to do? Our whole day was shot. And we just lost a ton of money on an awesome tour.

At this point we started trying to call the UK office of the tour group. Finding wifi was the first problem. We finally found a Starbucks where we sat down and called that place over and over and over. No one ever answered. Then we were faced with the decision to try to chase them down and meet them somewhere or if we should just forget the whole thing.

We kind of decided to do both. We started walking, and walking, and walking. We saw so many wonderful things. All the while, Brett was hugging me and helping me see the bright side of things. I'm not entirely sure why (maybe being overly tired??) but this was really hard for me to let go. Brett even sang, "Let It Go" in his best Elsa voice.

In the end, I did let go, and it was a great day. Any day in London is a great day.

Big Ben can be seen in the background; notice my forced smile.

This might be one of my favorite pictures of the day. The kids handled missing the boat better than I did.
#londonselfie

Westminster Abbey

The Globe Theater!!! So cool! All along the Thames there were people dancing, playing instruments, singing, blowing bubbles, painting, flying kites, and so on. It was such a creative place that I think Shakespeare would have liked.