The Bahblog

Claire here! Yesterday was another lovely day in London. The weather is still a bit chilly (I'm sure our Wisconsin friends are laughing at this), but we dressed more weather-appropriate. We started the day with a lazy breakfast at the AirBnB then rode the tube to the British Museum.

The British Museum

Once at the Museum, we did the Rick Steves' British Museum audio tour, which I highly recommend. We saw all of the major sites in about 1.5 hours, had a nice lunch in the cafe on the ground floor, then explored on our own for another hour or so.

The Rick Steves tour took us through Egypt, Assyria and Ancient Greece.

The Rosetta Stone - the tablet that allowed historians to translate and understand ancient hieroglyphics - was remarkable.

We toured through the Egypt section, seeing statues, old remains and cat mummies!

The Ancient Greece section included ancient pottery and art lifted from the Parthanon. Per Rick Steves, the Greek government would like all of this back, but England claims that it has taken better care of it than the Greeks would have.

After the Rick Steves audio tour, we roamed around the museum a bit longer, got lunch and headed out.

Buckingham Palace and Westminster

After the British Museum we walked to Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately, the Queen forgot our tea reservation and we were not allowed in, so we snapped a photo of a royal guard and decided to do Rick Steves' Westminster audio walking tour (I take after my father in my love for Rick Steves).

Big Ben is covered in scaffolding but it was neat to see the Houses of Parliament, especially with the current political climate in Britain. At one point we got way too cold and ducked into a coffee shop to warm up but pressed on through the rest of the tour and learned quite a bit. The tour also pointed our 10 Downing Street (where the PM lives), which we would have walked right past without the tour.

The London Eye

Soho Pub Crawl

After our audio tour, we did the London Walks Soho Pub Crawl tour. London Walks is a walking tour company (they're named appropriately) and their tours are fabulous. For 10 pounds, we had a wonderful guide take us all around Soho, talking about the interesting history and pointing out landmarks along the way. Soho has gone from a slum, to Chinatown, to a newly developing hip and trendy area. We stopped in three pubs and tried local ciders and beers, and learned of the pubs' rich history.

One of the pubs had two black cats, Earl and Gray, so we obviously we had to take pictures with the cats.

The tour ended at a very trendy bar and we decided to go out to dinner with our tour group (a father and daughter from California and a man from Australia). We went to a local fish and chips place and had a great time. It was so much fun to mingle with other travels.

And that's a wrap on day three!