We figured out how to navigate both the Underground (subway) and the double-decker buses, but this day we just walked, because there was so much cool stuff right where we were -- gardens and monuments and such, and the weather was unexpectedly lovely. Unfortunately everyone else had the same idea and the streets were packed! Overtourism is definitely a "thing." And we felt it even more as we had just come from wild and empty Iceland. Here, in no particular order, is some of what we saw this day.
| Overtourism in action -- this is the famous "changing of the guard" that we stumbled on by luck. Good thing this wasn't our only chance to see it, because wow. |
| The Palace gates. |
| Somehow in my mind I expected the Palace to have towers and crennelations like a medieval castle; it looks grand but so ... modern. |
| On a lovely spring afternoon, everyone was out enjoying the parks and gardens all over the city. |
| In the age of cellphones London still has the iconic red phone booths. |
| And a pub named for one of my childhood heroes -- we just had to stop in for a pint. |
| Upstairs at the pub was a recreation of Holmes and Watson's living room. It very accurately matched my imagination. |
| Somewhere in our storage is a photo of teenaged me posing in front of Big Ben on a trip with my parents. So it was seriously fun to see Dan in the same location half a century later. |


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