Monday, August 23, 2010

Day 2: Buckingham Palace and a steak

Buckingham Palace is only open in August when the Queen makes her annual visit to Scotland and as luck would have it, it coincided with our visit. So rather join the throngs of people watching The Changing of the Guard, we got to see inside the Palace where many fancy parties are held. They also had a nice exhibit called The Queen's Year which highlighted her official duties. Like most historical sites in London, they offered excellent audio guides with your tour. This made everything very quiet which helped punctuate Matthew "what's that?" 's
Buckingham Palace does not have mildew

After the Palace, we had a nice lunch with Hope and Matthew at Wagamama. The waitress acted like I was the first person to ever actually eat the Kimchi which makes me wonder why they serve it. They went off to a Dr appt for Matthew and Chris and I continued to explore.
Our first stop was Harrod's, where we found out "I cannot has" and rode the escalators all the way to the top and back down.
Then we headed off the Westminster area.



After some photo's with Big Ben, we did a tour of Westminster Abbey which even at the "at your own pace" audio tour takes several hours. Chris and I watch the Tudors (I know, right!) and so he was engaged in this tour seeing where some of his favorite characters are buried. 

We then did a quick run through of Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. We were running on empty so we literally ran in, saw the Monet and Van Gogh and ran out.
We detoured through Piccadilly Circus on the way to get back to the hotel.

I am the only person in the world who like pigeons

For dinner, Hope and Ben took us to Gaucho's an Argentinian steak house. Chris had warned me that they don't eat a lot of steaks in England. Since I come from beef country, I am a little snobbish about my steaks. The best part of the evening came when the server asked Chris if he wanted a sauce on his steak and Chris said, "Sauce? I thought it was supposed to be a good steak."
It was a good steak but my dad cooks steaks just as good so I wouldn't write home about it. We did have excellent Argentinian Malbec, and my wine knowledge seemed to impress Chris. He is glad I took that class at UT. 

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