England: London Bridge Did Not Fall Down, When I Was On It
Saturday, May 14th
After our full English breakfast, it was onto the coaches for a driving tour of London. On my coach, our tour guide was Sue and our bus driver was Mike. I only mention Mike because he looked about twelve... and with his red hair and boyish face looked like that red-headed pizza vampire from that one cool episode of the X-Files. Laura knows who I mean.
Anyway, let's talk about the tour. Sue was awesome... she had that infamous dry British wit. I'm being serious... she was great. At one point saying that they named a gift from Egypt Cleopatra's Needle because she was "the only Egyptian we'd ever heard of." Our first stop on the tour was the Prince Albert Memorial. It was a time for us to actually hop off the coach and stretch out a bit. I have a picture of an Asian tour group taking a picture in front of the memorial... which I think is absolutely hilarious. I also think that Victoria's love for Albert is also a little hilarious. When he died, she had the Memorial built, the large acoustically-atrocious concert hall across the street, and there's another statue to both of them near Buckingham Palace. Maybe that's not love... maybe that's showing off because you're an immature Queen. Not her... you.
The tour, of course, showed all sorts of sights including Big Ben (which is the bell, not the clock), Westminster Abbey, the Tower Bridge, and a stop at Buckingham Palace. The stop at Buckingham did little to excite me... and it only showed me what I came to dislike about London during the rest of the day: frankly, there were too many damn foreigners. And I'm not talking like a typical American about non-Americans... I'm talking about non-Brits. Everyone we saw at Buckingham Palace were from other countries... not England. Now I know that the English have no reason to show up at Buckingham Palace (particularly on a Saturday when there are SO many tours), but I went on to notice that there weren't many native Brits around the entire rest of the day. Maybe I was in the wrong parts of London (which is possible), but I became very annoyed with the false, touristy London with which I was being faced. And now, in retrospect, I really wish I had been able to see London on a weekday. I think that would have better shown me what London is really like. Oh... nothing cool happened at Buckingham Palace.
After getting back on the coach, Sue asked if we'd like to get our picture taken next to one of the famous Palace guards. We, of course, said yes. So our coach headed to St. James's Palace to the one guard we could walk up to. Yes... one guard. And we just walked up to him and stood next to him like, well, like irritating tourists. I was actually so annoyed by us--by our group--that when I went up to the guard I said, "Now say Americans are irritating and intrusive" and snapped my picture.

Notice the smallest, tiniest little smile from the guard. And I am an idiot.
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I would later find out that the other coach did the exact same thing with the exact same Palace guard... so this guard had to stand with two large annoying groups of tourists. Furthermore, as we were leaving, ANOTHER tour group was coming up to do the same picture taking thing. How annoying for that guy!
The tour ended in Covent Garden which I really didn't get a chance to see. Mike wanted to get tickets to We Will Rock You: a musical by Queen... so we left Covent Gardens to go to the half-price ticket booth. When we found Bishop and Kent and the ticket booth, his show was already sold out. He was upset by it but pretended not to be, which made me feel worse for him. They ended up deciding to go see The Phantom of the Opera... which did not interest me in the least. Andrew Lloyd Weber, it has been proven, is the devil. So I didn't get tickets to anything, holding out hope that the fabulous city of London would have something greater in store for me that evening.