Day 7 – Parliament, Westminster Abbey and little of Buckingham Palace

The day was not going to get away from us today, so we ordered a wake up call for 8am. Up and dressed we eventually made it out of our room by 9am. We walked out of our hotel and headed straight for the Abbey. It was located across the Thames River from our hotel and fortunately our hotel was located from by the bridge. Somehow I managed to book us right in the middle of everything.

The Westminster Abbey is an amazing structure both inside and out. We walked around entire church. When we first got there at 9:30am, they opened up some side doors to enter for a mass at 10am. We decided to walk around instead. Part of the Abbey was closed due to it being Sunday, but we still managed to get a good look around. At 10 after 10 we did end up going into the church for mass. Unfortunately, we could not take any pictures. I will definitely head back in the upcoming day to visit the inside of the church in order to take some pictures.

Next, we walked over to the Parliament building, another mind blowing architectural marvel. It was not open today, I believe due to it being Sunday. We will attempt to visit it again tomorrow. Nevertheless, we walked around most of the building, pointing and waving at all the intricate orinamental stone carvings. We continued walking down Whitehall street, passed Downing Street. Always see it on TV and now it’s nice to see it in person.

Stopped in at Lord Moon’s Restaurant at 11:30am for a well need lunch. Since we did not eat any breakfast, we were both pretty hungry. Mama had a trifecta meal of shrimp cocktail, pigs in a blanket and tomato soup. I had a Brie and Bacon Burger. I did not try any of Mama’s meal, but would venture to say mine was best.

Off to Buckingham Palace. It was around a 10-15 minute walk. There was a crazy amount of people near the entrance and we did not stay too long. We took it in and decided to maybe come back during the week when the traffic was less.

Around the corner from the palace was the Queen’s Gallery. It was a museum showing and sharing the history of the English monarch and how it came to be. It had vast paintings of much of the Russian empire and Queen Victoria, weaponry, fine china and several very impressive sculptures. Leaving the museum, we walked the gardens for a short time and then hopped into a cab back to the hotel.