After a much needed night of sleep, we were feeling
refreshed (despite a rude awakening by the noisy garbage truck!) and ready to
continue our exploration of London! Our first stop of the day was at Buckingham
Palace to see the changing of the guard. We arrived a bit later than expected
but still managed to find a good spot to see the action. We watched as the band
played (we think we even heard them playing Piano Man!), the soldiers marched
by, and the guards’ horses were brought in. It was difficult to see what was
happening inside the gate, but we were able to see what happened outside the
palace gate.
For lunch, we went to Borough Market, a large outdoor/indoor
farmer’s market. Unfortunately, many of the shops in the market were closed at
the time, but there were still many food options, including burgers, fish and
chips, and gelato. One adventurous soul from the group even tried a steak and
kidney pie!
After lunch, we visited The Shard, which is the tallest
skyscraper in western Europe. It was designed to look like a broken shard of
glass. It contains a mixture of offices, hotels, apartments, and restaurants.
On the way to the Tower Bridge, we got our tickets for the
48-hour big bus tour. The tickets will allow us to get on and off of the bus as
much as we like over the next two days to do some more sightseeing. We
continued walking over towards the Thames River and over the Tower Bridge to
see the Tower of London.
Then we decided to use the cruise ticket that came with the
48-hour bus tour. Along the way, we saw a few SUSTAINABLE landmarks - yay! One
was a tall building called the Gherkin, which is designed to cut energy
consumption in half. The other landmark we saw is Blackfriars Rail Bridge,
which is powered by solar panels that provide half the energy for Blackfriars
Station. The cruise took us to Westminster. We got off right next to the London
Eye and journeyed to West End so we could look into the different shows that
were playing. After this, the group separated to explore in smaller groups. We
had a lot of fun exploring on our own and managed to find our way home safely
with little difficulty.
Jessie S.
Senior, Elementary and Middle Level Education
Jenna F.
Senior, Elementary Education
