Sunshine, the tower, and the price to enter a church

Our first day in the UK dawned sunny and warm - I know, we were as surprised as you.  But with such gorgeous day an outside activity called, so we headed into town and to the Tower of London via St Paul's Cathedral.  We were astonished to find that St Paul's has a £16 entry fee so we admired the outside and headed along up the river to the tower.

 

We had perfect timing arriving just as a tour began.  The Beefeaters of the tower do the tours and I have to say it was a highly entertaining and informative.  Over an hour we wandered the tower complex (in a giant crowd, I think it must have been close to 100 people) learning the intricate history of kings and queens, traitors and martyrs.

The tour over we took our own time to wander around, seeing the crown jewels, amazing suits of armour and taking in the history of the place.  We spent hours, it was fascinating.  With the sunshine, it was busy but it is a big place and I have to say the crowd of small children with homemade crowns were gorgeous.

We wandered around up the Thames, shared a burger at a pub and made our way to Westminster.  We saw the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey (it has another £16 entry fee!) just as it started to spit rain so we called it a day.  Which was probably just as well as by then we had managed to get ourselves rather sunburnt - yes you can get sunburn in the UK.

It is just lovely to be able to return to our friend's home for a meal and to put our feet up ready for a day when the plan is shopping.