Easter Weekend in London!

We decided to take advantage of the long Easter weekend for a trip to London. We got some great airfare and used Karen's reward points for Marriott bucks.
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The first full morning we were there started off as a semi-bust. We went down to Buckingham Palace to try and see the changing of the guard at 11:30 a.m. Turns out a LOT of people had the same idea. Karen needed a boost by the elbows to see anything! We got a few good pictures though.
Here is a video of the Buckingham Palace Marching band. We thought Tim would really appreciate this...

After trying to see the changing of the guard, we tried to get tickets to a show at Shakespears Globe but they didn't have anything playing that night. On the way there we got a few good pics of Big Ben and Parliament.

Here is a video of most of the 11:00 a.m. chimes. We narrated the video with a little info on Big Ben.

We ended up getting pretty good seats to Wicked, playing at the Apollo Victoria Theatre in London's west end. It was far better than we'd expected. Christine and OB both loved it... now we know why!
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One of the real highlights of the trip was our visit to London Tower. We got there by a riverboat from Big Ben/Parliament on the River Thames.

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Here's Jay inside a guard booth in the Tower of London... nice try big guy!
Here's a good view of the Tower Bridge from inside London Tower. The audio tour of this place was awesome!

The weather in London was great! We ended getting a little more sun than we'd hoped to. Here's an outside view of the London Tower.

We also got to see the Crown Jewels from a flat moving escalator that carried you past them. Our friend David (Karen's boss) said we really should check 'em out, so we stuck it out in the 20 minute line to get in. They don't allow photographs inside, so we can't post any pictures. They were cool though!

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After touring most of the Tower of London we made our way to Trafalgar Square to catch a night-time walking ghost tour. Here's Karen playing in a phone booth while we were waiting to start our tour.

We passed a handful on inviting pubs. Because of the dollar to GBP exchange rate, Jay refrained from drinking on this trip. A pint would have cost at LEAST $10USD!

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The city of London must pay these guys to walk around all punk'd out. People were taking pictures of them everywhere. We had to photograph them from the back to be discrete.

On our Ghost Tour, we stopped below inside the courtyard of the Somerset House. There is a huge collection of impressionist masterpieces in here.

One of the last places we stopped on our ghost tour was the infamous Charles Dickens 'Ye Old Curiosity Shop'. There were a couple super spacey drunk people stumbling around while we were getting the stories of this place and its ghosts. It'll just color the memory for us...
We went to Easter Service at Westminster Abbey. They closed the abbey down to tourists and only allowed people in for worship. When we got there, we found standing room only!

After leaving Westminster Abbey, we walked down the street toward Trafalgar Square and went right by Big Ben and Parliament. It was a beautiful morning. The sun was warm and there were hundreds of tourists taking in the sights.

Here is Trafalgar Square. The tallest sculpture is Nelson's Column. It honors Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, who won some incredible naval battles during the Napoleonic Wars. He's a real big national hero.

Here we are in Hyde Park. There were a lot of people out in the park this day. People were throwing frisbees, kicking soccer balls, having picnics, etc. The colors in the tulip gardens were really nice.Our last day in London we headed west to find a GREAT curry house. On our way back, we stopped in Kensington Gardens. Below, Karen is sitting on the wall outside the Kensington Palace garden.