In London, I left my Heart; Savings Account; Feelings in my Extremities.

The Lime Tree Hotel: A Great Place to Stay.

With great pain, we depart from the Empire today. I had a complete blast in the UK. On Wednesday, we did the double-decker sightseeing tour, and didn't even manage to get it all in. My advice to any future travelours: get on the bus as early as possible if you are going to do the sight-seeing tour. If not, buy a one or two day Tube Pass and get around that way. For Katie and I, a one day pass was £10.50, as opposed to the £22.00 A PIECE for the Bus. Also, the Bus runs into a lot of delays, as the downtown area gets crazy congested during the day. Oh, not to mention that its COLD. AS. HELL. The upper deck can be brutal when the wind is really going. Then again, the Tube during rush hour can be a bit stifling as well.

"Mind the Gap, Tosser."

We did get a few good pictures from the Bus:

Kensington Palace. Former home of Princess Diana.

Apparently, its against the law to walk underneath the main archway, unless you are a Monarch.

Things were running a little late so we made the move directly for Tower of London (we already purchased our tickets with our Hotel.) We managed a few pics over there before we tried to settle our train situation:

London Bridge.
London Tower.
Guarding the Crown Jewels. (Insert Joke Here.)

Beefeater Dude.
Bloody Tower. Ominous.

Traitor's Gate. You don't want to be on the other side of that gate.

So we hadn't quite booked our Train to Paris yet. That would have to come at St. Pancras. We tubed on over to book our tickets. Apparently there were two trains available: one at 05:30 (that's oh-five-thirty: in the morning) or an 11:05 AM train which was about £115 more. I made a harsh decision and opted for the later train at the higher price. Mind you, this was still much cheaper than what the two travel agents we had visited earlier in the day had quoted us. I figured it was about 50pence for every extra minute of sleep we got to have.

We didn't think to get any pictures while we were in Piccadilly Circus looking for some good Theatre tickets for the evening. We ended up seeing Les Miserables at the Queen's Theater for £30.00 each -- I recommend going to the "tkts" booth for the good seats--there are tons of other "brokers" in the area trying to sell (or resell) tickets the day of the show. We had pretty solid seats - seventh row.

At the end of the day, I'm really going to miss London, and I do hope to return someday. If only to watch re-runs of Sue Thomas: F.B."Eye".