Photo Recap: things we chanced upon in London.

So this is a collection of things randomly seen, which I didn't plan to see, but I would have if I had thought about it.

This is a building with a sign that says Gracechurch Street. I was regularly overjoyed to see a common street sign in a place written about by Jane Austen. I would quote lines from Pride and Prejudice at my brother whenever we found one: "Her other uncle is in trade, and lives in Cheapside!" 

This is a bin and a lamp post with the logo Seven Dials on it. That's one of my fav Agatha Christie books, but in fact this has nothing to do with the book. It is however a very charming area in Covent Garden, an intersection with 7 spokes off it. This is where we saw the musical Matilda. Covent Garden was the coolest place, I think. Trendy shops, walkable streets, just not enough cheap food. Sydney is so much better for cheap restaurants, as far as I could tell.

This is a pretty area of Hyde Park. Most of Hyde Park is just huge flat grass, rather barren, the sort of place you take dogs to run around, not what I was imagining, which would have been an English formal garden or something like this with flowers.

This is outside Hyde Park, in front of Wellington's house, I forget the name, and near Wellington's arch, and some horses paraded by. We followed them to Buckingham Palace. It was so strange.

This is the palace, through the fence, with a marching band. It was mainly luck that we got there at the right time.

This is it, the guard is being changed right there! It took forever so some people had actually got bored and left by the time they did this bit.

On another day, at the tower of London, I had my photo taken with the Duke of Monmouth. We chatted about stuff. He got his head cut off later on. Interesting fact, he arrived in England at Lyme Regis, where we went later, and has a beach and things named after him.

Inside the White Tower, I was delighted to find a garderobe, which is a toilet. It drops into the moat/lawn. The only disappointment was that it didn't have coathangers in it like I read about in Discworld.

We chanced upon M&Ms world, which was really tacky and a lot bigger than you would think a shop that sold M&Ms would be.

We didn't go inside Sherlock Holmes's house, because there were long queues and after all he isn't a real person who lived there, it's just the house number that is literally significant. It's above the door. Notice the policeman in a proper helmet. They all wore those! Amazing.

Trafalgar Square Olympic clock, on 100 days. Nice round number!

The thing this recap is missing is the tardis at Earls Court station. Cannot find that photo anywhere. But imagine me, with suitcases, pretending to travel in the tardis.