Started in London, ended in Peru

The day started early. Sara had the cleaners coming and we were eager to get to London. She took us to ashford international where we bought four high speed train tickets that included all tube and bus transportation. £60 for all of us was a great deal since the train got us to London in 37 minutes an a comparable GO ride to TO would cost $20 each return, wouldn't include TTC and would take over an hour.
We managed to navigate the tube all the way to the British museum which is surprisingly FREE!! That is one BIG museum.





The Rosetta Stone is the first wonder you see. We also saw a number of pieces that have companions in the Met in NYC. We saw an awful lot of dead people, mummies, remains and Lindow man (something for you to look up). I think we could've spent several days there but we finished around three.
After an in depth consultation of our guide books, we decided we could make the most of our visit by heading down to the houses of parliament. As we exited the tube, we were greeted by Big Ben.





He seemed happy to see us. We walked around the parliament and then headed to Jewel Tower. It's the last remaining part of the original palace of Westminster. It's pretty old. It's also the place where weights and measures were standardized.
We then walked around Westminster Abbey (sure is expensive to go in there!) and took our fair share of pictures. We walked back to the river then and headed onto a rather amusing boat cruise to the tower bridge.





Our travelcard that brought us to London also got us a sizable discount for the boat. Apparently it gives us 2 for 1 access to many of the top attractions.
The commentary for the cruise was provided by a gentleman whose family has worked the boats for the past 200 years (guess that's the only way to get a job there). He gave us lots of great information including the fact that the Tate Museum of Modern Art is free for a good reason and that the word WHARF stands for WareHouse Accessing River Front (c'mon now, admit you never knew that). After walking around the Tower we crossed the Tower Bridge and started to look for our restaurant.





We were going on a recommendation from the DK travel book I had bought at Costco. We walked past the Dungeon exhibit (not so sure I want to go into that scary place) but we couldn't find the street for the restaurant. Turns out preparations for the olympics have eliminated the street where the restaurant had resided due to massive expansions at the Tower Bridge tube station but more because of this massive skyscraper that's being built. It didn't really matter though because we ended up at an AMAZING Peruvian restaurant called Tito. Service was good and the food was even better. Everyone loved their foods.





Yes, I know there are probably a million restaurants where we could eat when we are back in London next week but it will be hard to turn down a return trip to Peru.
Tomorrow it's the long awaited Arundel castle. Mark has spoken about this since I met him. I hope it lives up to expectations!


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