The England Chronicles: A Royal Journey

On Day 3, we slept in, until 9 am. (since it was DoItYourSelf day) At breakfast, I decided to try Bubble and Squeek a traditional English food made of leftover vegetables(?) I was expecting some black breadish type food to show up,but what mine looked like(and tasted like) was a small, round, hash brown.Only it had other flavors,besides that of the potato, running through it so who knows what was in it. Hubby had an omelet, which he didn't really care for.(it was pretty bland)

We then walked downtown,past the houses of Parliament and the big old statue of Oliver Cromwell sitting out front, to Buckingham Palace.(for the changing of the guard)
On the way...we saw a familiar face:


(hello, Mr. Ex-President, nice to see you here!)







There were a zillion people there,needless to say, so we really didn't get close to the gate(or them). And no, we did not try to make them laugh. The flag was flying, which meant Queen Elizabeth was not in residence. So the state rooms were open to the public. We didn't have time to go in there..we were off to Westminster Abbey.



At which point and time, my digital camera died-for good. Fiddling with it,deleting old photos, and swapping out memory cards failed to free up any more space. You weren't allowed to take pics inside the church anyway(not like that's every stopped anyone)

The admission price was rather steep(15 lbs per person), so I was amazed to see tickets(I counted five,altogether) carelessy strewn all over the place. Inside, and outside. Someone could treat their whole family and not pay anything. So anyway..we saw all the burial places of the great. Queen Elizabeth 1(she's buried on top of her sister,Mary), Henry VIII, the Poet's Corner, etc. Got some of the audio guides, and spent several hours just wandering around and being educated.

But we had another mission...a familial one.


This dude designed three of the manhole covers in Westminster Abbey. I don't think that what I actually took a picture of was one of them,but it's the closest thing I could find to that. He is my kinda-sorta-ancestor(Thomas Crapper was not married but the ancestry is the same,from some sibling of his).We didn't make it over to his grave(which is in another cemetery,halfway across London). That's my link to Westminster Abbey.

We then took the Tube to Kew Gardens, where, upon viewing the greenhouse/fish collection/aquatica I flopped down on a bench,dead beat from about 10 hours of constant walking. My husband walked around for an hour and took pictures of the flowers. Being August, it was not quite as colorful as it could have been but there were still alot of flowers. I like flowers, but not as much as he does.(he could probably make an entire trip out of visiting various gardens, etc.)
Has supper at a greasy little place near one of the Tube stations(I had bacon for breakfast, bacon chips for lunch, and a bacon sandwich for supper and henceforth decided I was DONE with bacon for the rest of trip) and eventually found our way back to the hotel after a lengthy delay with one of the trains. Another day, done.