United Kingdom June 10, 2016

Did not have as early a morning because our first top was Westminster Abbey and it did not open until 10:00 am. On our walk to the abbey we passed Big Ben and the British Parliament Buildings.

 I just like the street view from here.

The London Eye

 Churchill

 David Lloyd George

 Ian Christian Smuts

 Gandhi

  Lincoln (in background) and Nelson Mandela

Westminster Abbey is the most famous English church in Christendom.  It is the sight of royal weddings, coronations, and burials since the 11th century.  It contains the period 100 years of English history - 3000 tombs, the remains of 29 Kings and Queens, and 100's of memorials to poets, politicians, scientists, and warriors.  Some of those buried here include, Lord Byron, Lewis Carroll, Shakespeare, Handel, Charles Dickens, and Lawrence Olivier to name a few.  The chapel itself is not nearly as big as it appears on television.  It is quite narrow and surrounded by hallway after hallway of smaller chapels, memorials and tombs.  

 Westminster Abbey

 Back of Westminster Abbey

After going to church we paid a visit to the Prime Ministers house on 10 Downing Street.  The street itself was blocked off by machine gun carrying guards.  They would not let us in for tea (not that we tried). A little ways down the street we encountered additional guards.  These guards were more traditional and not quite so threatening.

 From 10 Downing street it was a short walk to Churchill War Rooms.  The war rooms were used during WWII by Churchill and other political and military leaders as a command post.  The underground rooms were located close to Downing Street and under the Treasury building.  The various rooms are connected via narrow hallways.  Much of the exhibit is just as it was left when the war ended.  It was fascinating to walk through it and imagine what went on.  Very claustrophobic.  The rooms were designed to protect the occupants from the Nazi bombings.  In fact, a direct hit may have caused the building to collapse crushing those below.  In addition to the fear of being crushed the possibility of flooding from the river was ever present. 

 Entrance to war rooms

 Churchill's main bedroom

Cabinet room with maps

Dave yelped another restaurant for lunch.  It took us a minute to get our bearings but we were able to locate "Pickles" sandwich shop.  The sandwich was really good but they had no pickles.  

From the luxurious backstreet commoner sandwich shop we proceeded to the slightly more elaborate Buckingham Palace.   The palace was a grand building with ornate fencing and gate.  It does not offer tours and the closest we could get were the outside gates.  

 Entrance to Palace Courtyard

 The Palace

 Courtyard center monument

 Palace gate

 Palace gate

 Palace guards

 The real palace guard

Next we walked along the side of Hyde Park which goes on and on and on and on. We stopped at the park for just a moment to say we had been in the park.  

 Wade thought this lead to the Ministry of Magic.

Doesn't this look like a wizard?

At the end of our walk along Hyde Park we found the LDS Hyde Park Ward/Visitor Center.  The building hosts three functioning wards and doubles as a visitors center.  It is right next to a community college that brings in many investigators from all over the world.  The brief break from walking, the cool building, and the only refrigerated drinking fountain we found in the whole country were a nice rest stop.  

After our nice rest stop, we continued our walking journey to the Victoria and Albert Museum.  It was on the way to Harrod's Luxury Store. The store is 7 stories tall with everything and anything you would wish for.  The owner of the store was the father of Dodi Fayed, Princess Diana's boyfriend and so in the basement there is a memorial to the two of them. We picked up some fudge at the store that we enjoyed when we got home.

After a quick dinner we had one more stop to make.  The brothers all remember hearing their dad recount stories of his preaching to bystanders, drunks, and hecklers in Hyde Park.  Somewhere in our journeys we learned of a location in Hyde Park called Speakers Corner where people were able to have present their ideas.  This sounded a likely spot for where their father, Howard, may have preached.  The taxi dropped us right next to a concession area with Speakers' Corner written on the facility.  We were sure things had changed considerably since Howard was there.  Again, it was fun to imagine the scenes from 65+ years ago. 

Another taxi took us back to the hotel and the boys took a quick stroll and brought back Ben & Jerry's ice cream from the Tesco market.  Tesco market is the British version of 7-Eleven.  Another good day done.  Only 1 more day in London before heading home.