The tunnel looked like this. In fact that is me walking with my head down very fast. I was not so impressed!
Greenwich is a beautiful old seaport along the Thames, and if you didn't have the cars, you could be forgiven for thinking you were back in the days of the tall ships.
That's the Cutty Sark in the background.
Some of the beautiful historic buildings, again built in Sir Christopher Wren times, as he designed the Observatory there.
This is the view from the lookout near the Meridien Line, which the photo below explains.
It was then a ferry down the Thames and yes this is London Bridge!
It was raining fairly heavily as we got off the ferry. I am amazed at the locals who are running around in summer clothes!! I was frozen with long sleeved tee shirt and jacket. We then returned to Westminster, House of Parliament and Big Ben.
Westminster Abbey was closed today, so we unfortunately missed out on seeing the inside, but who could be unhappy about just seeing the outside. What an amazing building.
Some more gardening ideas from St James Park, on the way to the Palace
A quick selfie in front of the Palace
We then had a look at the Palace Mews. This is where the Royal coaches, cars, horses and the people who maintain them live.
This is the Australian State Coach which the Australian people generously presented to the Queen as a Bicentennial gift in 1988. We also saw the magnificent Golden State Coach which only comes out at Coronations, which is just as well as they have to pull out doors and windows to get it out of the coach house.
The next part of our day was very exciting. As mentioned above, the Queen and the corgis are actually on holidays at Balmoral at the moment. The Palace is then open for public visits to the State Rooms, so how lucky were we to be here at the right time. Obviously they won't let you take photos inside these rooms, and you go through airport type security first. The interiors are just magnificent, so much gold leaf on ornate plasterwork on walls and ceilings. The wall coverings look like embossed wall papers, I wish I had asked someone what they really were, in beautiful rich colours like deep reds and greens, also white and blues.
We also saw some magnificent artwork collections, and the Coronation garments worn by Queen Elizabeth. Magnificent is the best word I can think of to describe what we saw today, so sorry for over using it!
Then we had tea at the Palace. Twinings of course.
I best let Paul explain his trip on the London Eye as I had to pull out at the last minute due to being a chicken! Paul: Carolyn did the right thing, because although the wheel turned quite slowly and there was no swinging pods as such, we were very very high up. Quite an engineering masterpiece though.
Until tomorrow, bye.
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