Baltic Adventure - Day 16

Marble Arch

Wednesday, July 7: In all our previous trips to London, Debra and I had never experienced the most touristy thing of all... a city tour on a double-decker, open-top, red bus. So that's what we decided to do. We caught the bus at Victoria Station, just a few blocks from our hotel. And we pretty much saw every major site in the city. The weather was nice for most of the day so we enjoyed the tour. We got off the bus long enough to have lunch and take a tour of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.

Afterwards we picked up the tour via boat along the Thames River for the trip back toward Big Ben. We walked from the Parliament Building over to Buckingham Palace and decided to take in a visit to the Queen's Gallery. The summer exhibit at the Gallery featured art, furniture and other personal effects from the reign of King George III, who was the British monarch who lost the American colonies in the 18th century. I have a joke about our own 3rd George losing the colonies again in the 21st century, but I'll save that for my political blog.

After visiting the Queen's Gallery, we caught the red tour bus for the last leg back to Victoria Station then headed back to our hotel. That evening we met up with our friends Kim, Ali & Dave for delightful dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant. The weather, however, was dreadful. A full-on lightening and thunder storm hit London that evening. Several trees were lost in the storm and thousands of people lost power, but we managed to make it safely to Heathrow Airport the next morning, and our flight left on schedule with no delays.