The trickly shower and the Tower

Woke up nice and rested this morning. As hot as our room was, the little fan and the open window helped a bit. Tried out our shower to find the weakest pee-stream of a shower in the world. Water was hot though and clean too. No complains for the price. (YHA Hostel/ Central London: Google it). Four thumbs up so far.

Got the boys up a bit after we were up...We told them we'd let them sleep in and dammit, it was 8am! That's sleepin' in for us! Time to get outta bed!

Off to find breakfast and upload pictures. Hostel has continental breakfast. Fruit, croissant, coffee, juice. Still thumbs up but not on the breakfast. Kriss and I had coffee. Jake and Kyle sipped a juice drink and we decided to get food elsewhere.

Got busy sightseeing and tube-taking so we didn't eat until around 1pm, right before we got on the London Eye. A fast-food place with entirely mediocre "Chinese" food.

London Eye (google it): Next on our list was the eye. We tubed on over and found the place, got in a 15-minute line for tix. (right before our "chinese") then came back to queue up (see, using British vernacular!). Half-hour in line and we were up and riding to the top. Very cool. Very tall. Fun and views that you can't get elsewhere (except maybe for the helicopters we saw over the Thames).

After 'The Eye' it was on to Westminster Abbey. Closed for the afternoon. We saw it from outside and will return later. On the way out to Buckingham Palace, we found ourselves a public WC. Very nice. More fun than I've had in a public WC. Boys and I got to use automated sinks. Stick your hands in and auto-soap, auto-water and auto-dry. Awesome! Krissy in the women's room: Just regular sinks. Too bad. She missed a great London activity!:

Also on the way to Buckingham Palace: St. James' Park. We strolled through the park and the boys got Ice Cream they described as the best ice cream in the world. One small lick and I was convinced. Butterscotch!
We saw many people lounging in cool folding wooden lounge chairs and decided to pull up a few of them and kick it under a tree for a few minutes and for a picture. About 10-minutes into our relaxing moment a figure appeared towering over me and blocking out some of my light. He said, in a slightly difficult to understand accent: "That'll be Six Pounds-Fifty". Wha??? Say again?

"Six pounds-fifty". The chairs. One pound-fifty per person per hour. I asked his reflective-vest-wearing self to show me ID that he was an official chair-renter and HE DID! OK, so we missed the little sign describing the chair usage policy and fees, but we ponied up the cash and hung out a little longer to get our pence-worth. Strange.

Buckingham Palace was a swarm of tourists in the hazy sunshine taking pictures and watching "Important People" dressed in the best emerge from the palace. Weird.

Walked from BP (not the oil co) down The Mall to Admiralty Arch then St. James' Square and Picadilly Circus. After that it was tube back to the hostel for pizzas and some uploading of pix.

After that we headed tubing down to The Tower of London to see the Ceremony of the Keys. A lot of pomp and circumstance about locking down the castle every evening. Pretty cool. Fun to see the tower at night and see Tower Bridge at night too. Pix forthcoming.

Exhausted, we found our way back to the hostel where we sit now typing this for you to see in hopes that YOU enjoyed OUR day in London. We did. Our feet hurt, Our eyelids are drooping and we want to do this again tomorrow. Boys are already 1-1/2 hours ahead of us sleeping so we're going to go and try to catch up. Read again later!! ~J&K&K&J