Steps today: 21 231
First thing’s first: The New Room. (It’s not really this pink! I was just too lazy to adjust the camera for indoor lighting)
We were told this morning that our new room would not be ready before 3PM, so we vacated the old one in the morning and left our bags in the luggage room for the day.
The staff was VERY unorganized and unhelpful. Shit happens, I get it – it’s not their fault an emergency repair needed to be carried out… but they seemed not to care and unwilling to help make the transition any easier. One of these days I may go into more detail, but I prefer to just put it all behind me now and move on.
The new room is AT LEAST twice the size of the old one; it’s an upgrade. Unfortunately despite being bigger, it’s much stuffier – however that may be due to the spike in temperature. Figures I’d be here when London sees it’s hottest September day in over 40 years!!!
Due to all these room-shenanigans, we didn’t start our sightseeing day until around 10AM this morning. Needing to go to another room to shower last night meant a late night so we slept in a little this morning, plus packing our luggage this morning ate up a lot of time.
We started with a walk in the park again, which is turning into our favourite activity.
We checked out the rental prices for paddle boats on the lake, but the weather was not conducive for this activity today. It rained for about 15 minutes, but it just happened to be the 15 minutes when we were at the Sepentine; bad timing. Instead, we sat for a drink and admired the ducks on the pond.
After this, we meandered down Oxford Street for a while, and had lunch at a pub.
After lunch, we strolled through Mayfair and Green Park:
And then the main goal for the day: The Buckingham Palace tour!! I was so excited about it!
No pictures allowed, but I snuck this one in.
It was fun, I’m not disappointed at all, but (and I don’t want this to sound like a complaint) it was like all the other Royal Palaces I have ever visited – which is MANY. I think the draw here it that it’s Buckingham Palace specifically.
There was a very good exposition of the Queen’s Gowns and Dresses, but it was EXTREEMLY poorly organized. I think the organizers completely underestimated (or knew nothing about) the crowds that would show up to see them. It did not flow nicely, there were gluts of people trying to read little sign boards that were low down to the ground… her wedding dress was in a little niche that was just chaotic!
After the tour, the exit is at the back of the gardens, but you could not wander around. It was just Café, Gift Shop, Exit. Still, I was able to get a nice shot – and best of all: I can now say I have had tea at Buckingham Palace!
This was the best shot of the back of the palace that I could get:
I love this one of the lake:
The tour took 3 hours because of the calamitous dress expo, so we were too tired afterwards to do much more than have dinner and call it a night. We walked to South Kensington, explored the area a bit, ate and hiked home. I say hike because I wanted to walk through the park home, but I didn’t realise it was not lit. It looked like a walk into a black hole and there was no way I was going to venture deep into the nothingness!! So we walked around it instead.
I did get to practice more Night Shot Taking on the way home…
And…. here we go again: a few days ago, I got bit by something, I don’t know what. I have 2 huge welts on my leg now, I think I am just in the stage were it gets worse before it gets better… but I have to admit that it’s starting to hurt so I will go see a pharmacist tomorrow and see what they tell me. I’m not that concerned because as we all know this happens to me A LOT, but better safe than sorry I guess.
I put my ring next to them to help give an idea of the scale… (yes, I know I need a shave)
miss you... have fin however
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