A Bike Ride through London!

Robyn's one request was to do the Fat Tire Bike Tour. The Thames one only ran on Thurs-Sat., so we did the Royal Parks one instead.

Instead of bells to let people know when we were coming, we had these little guys who made squeeky bath toy noises. It was awesome..lol

I was not talented enough to take photos while riding my bike, so all the shots you will see are taken while I was not on them. Robyn on the other hand, was quite the multi-tasker.

Break for lunch at Trafalgar Square

All of our squeakers!

This is the back of 10 Downing Street where the Prime Minister lives (basically like the White House). Our tour guide told us the PM hasn't lived there for 2 years, but this was news to me, news to the guards with the machine guns, and the masses of people waiting outside the front gate... Not sure who to believe.

Old Admiralty Building at Horse Guards Parade. We obviously missed the parade of horses.

Also at the Horse Guards Parade. The building covered in vines is apparently a bomb-proof citadel built in 1940.

Our tour guide talking about Westminster Abbey

View of Whitehall roofs from a bridge in St. James's Park

Hyde Park

So after the tour, it was time for some soft serve ice cream with a flake!

Not sure what this was. Looked like a Buddhist temple in the middle of Kensington Park

Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Garden

We happened to take our tour on the 13th anniversary of Princess Diana's death (she dies August 31, 1997). This is her memorial fountain in Hyde Park. It was designed to be like a necklace to express her feminism and be interactive so that people would hang out in the area and not just view a statue and leave. There were tons of families sitting out around the area, and little kids enjoying the cool fresh water, so it seemed succesful to me.

Austrailian War Memorial in Hyde Park Corner to commemorate the 102,000 Austrailians who died in the First and Second War.

So at Hyde Park Corner, they have horse crossings! The buttons are of course like 6 feet tall so people on horses can reach them. We saw tons of horse poo in the road, but where in the world are these horses coming from?

Hold your horses! (sorry, couldn't resist)

St. James's Park-we walked the route the bike tour had taken us to get better photos

View from the same bridge as above in St. James's Park

Horse Guards Parade (on our walk-not bike ride)

A walk down Whitehall

Houses of Parliament from Southbank

So as you can see from this post, Robyn and I took the 11 a.m. Royal Parks Fat Tire bike tour. We started at Queensway, rode through Kensginton Park (stopped at Kensington Palace where Princess Diana had lived, but we couldnt see it as it was being renovated-lots of things are being renovated now so that they are all done in 2012 for the Olympics). Then we did the length of Kensginton Park passing the Serpentine Gallery, rode past The Serpentine (body of water in Hyde Park), through Hyde Park (via Hyde Park Corner), through Green Park, down The Mall passing St. James's Park, and over to Trafalgar Square where we breaked for lunch. From there we did the Horse Guards Parade (which I had never seen, well not recently) down to Westiminster Abbey, then back through the parks to Queensway. Surprisingly enough, I wasn't the worst bike rider in the group- one young kid ran into a wall. However, it was tough work to start and stop at the intersections. Luckily though, we spent very little time on the roads of London as they are CRAZY drivers and riding on the opposite side of the road is tricky!

After the tour, Robyn and I walked basically the intital route through the parks down to Westminster to get some pictures of the sun setting at Parliament. As she was leaving the next morning (at like 6), we wanted to do a nice sit down dinner, but by the time we got to that area, we were too exhuasted and starving to walk anymore to find somewhere. So we ended up eating Burger King at Waterloo train station (Robyn ate a bagel sandwich from somewhere else). So not quite the send-off I would have liked, but man if felt awesome to get home and go to bed that night.

World Cup, Trafalgar Square, and Royalty!

Trafalgar Square to see the first match of the World Cup live-South Africa vs. Mexico!

with a few of my closest friends...

I don't know where this soccer ball goes after the World Cup or who gets to keep it, but I thought I'd better sign it anyways. ***Cat, this is for you since you asked me to post pictrues of people...you know.

See-- "Becky USA 2010"! I didn't want to give my last name just in case immigration was still after me..haha. really.

The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. Check out the ship in the bottle on top of the plinth (Pete, Dad, Zak, this is the plinth we watched online for like 3 months).

Trafalgar square again...

Whitehall Street

These elephants are all over London and each one is different. They are apparently for sale. I don't know who would buy this and where they would put it...

Trafalgar Square

Nelson's Column (at guess where?Trafalgar Square. I obviously found Trafalgar Square very photogenic.)

Admiralty Arch (I think). Leaving Trafalgar and heading down The Mall (just a street, no shopping in sight) to Buckingham Palace.

Admiralty Arch from the other side (if thats what this is...)

British flags flanking The Mall

Bob needed to go to the restroom quickly, so we popped into St. James' Park and found this 3'-0" tall pelican just hanging out next to the restrooms and posing for photos. Yes, it's real! No trainer or anything. He just wandered over to hang out. He even angles his face for you to show his "better angle". so strange...

Experimenting with the camera in St. James's Park

Flags at Buckingham Palace

St. James's Park. So pretty! (Bob says as it's owned by the Queen and next to Buckingham Palace, it's of course going to be one of the prettiest parks in London!)

Buckingham Palace

You can just spot the London Eye and Big Ben through St. James's Park

The Mall (see, there's no shopping...)

Guard's outside of Buckingham Palace (next to red buses and telephone boxes, this is about as British as you can get! :) )

Check out Bob's good camera skills! (Again, for you Cat!)

I like these signs (although I don't always have luck with them. Refer to yesterday's post...)

St. James's Palace (I don't know who St. James is or I would explain that in my post...)

Pall Mall. Dad, this sign is for you. Since I used to play London Monopoly growing up (I thought everyone did), and used to always want this street because it said Mall. However, the street is not really a mall...just fyi.

St. James's Street..I think.

Another elephant! In a rugby outfit! This is the first one I've seen in costume (or uniform I'm sure he would prefer for it to be called...).

Somewhere on St. Jame's Street. Or Piccadilly maybe? Clearly I didn't pay much attention to where I was on this street.

Ok, sorry about the excess of photos, but it was the first day in a week the sun came out, so I thought it should be documented...heavily! I was sitting on Bob's couch in my pajamas watching the Opening Ceremonies of the World Cup in Johannesburg at 1 p.m. (I had only woken up an hour earlier at noon after staying up all night finishing off the Glee Season One dvd's). They kept showing insets of people watching the ceremonies live in Trafalgar Square, so Bob and I decided after they were done, we would get dressed and head that way just to see what was going on as the first game would be shown an hour after the close of the ceremonies. There were quite a few people, but not as many as we expected. Tomorrow when England plays the U.S. it will for sure be PACKED. Not sure if that's where I want to go to watch the game (because I'd rather not have to see the whole game or stand to do so).

Anyways, after getting some photos (just a few ;)), we headed down the Mall towards Buckingham Palace. I felt much more at home with the tons of people who all had their cameras out in this area. Perhaps that also led to the many many photos. We walked along St. James's Park and then turned around at Buckingham Palace to walk towards St. James's Palace which was just one street over-not quite as nice as the Queen's. It looked more like a fort or castle than a palace...

After taking some photos on Pall Mall (expained above), we then headed down a very regal looking street (St. James' Street maybe?) towards Green Park to get to a tube stop to head home. Not much to explain today-figured the photos do it better!

Tomorrow's the big day for England--Go England! (Oh and today marks my first week in London-so I celebrated with a batter-dipped sausage, just like I did the first day I was here!).