Sight seeing with Bekah in London

Seeing London thru Bekah's eyes was fun. After a full breakfast at our Rubens Hotel at the Palace, we went and purchased tour tickets on the Big Bus Red Tour. It is a 24 hr pass to just ride the bus around town and get off and on at your desire. We walked to the Apollo theatre to buy our tickets for Wicked before getting on the tour. We first walked to Buckingham Palace, across the street from our hotel to watch the changing of the guards. Then we walked across the green to the first bus stop. We had good seats on the open top level of the red double-decker bus. Our tour guide was wonderful-quite witty-- and very informative. We rode past Hyde Park, the Marble Arch, Baker street (Sherlock Holmes museum), Oxford Circus, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, big Ben, Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, & aquarium, and Royal National theatre. (There was a diversion because of a Jesus Festival on the Tower Bridge on Saturday. They slightly changed their routes to avoid the pedestrian crowds.) We saw St Paul's Cathedral from a few blocks away and jumped off at the Tower of London. Bekah was having some PMS and cramping so we slowed our pace hoping for the ibuprofen to kick in. The tour leader was the Warden who had a great presentation but meant standing in groups for short spurts of information. Bekah seemed to be fading--so I stopped into the royal jewels souvenir shop to inquire what we could skip. The lady said that the Crown jewels were only displayed at that location--she would lead us in a side entrance ahead of the long queue so Bekah could at least see the 'best' of the show. God is good, she didn't need to offer to do that for us.

We left without exploring the tower or the dungeon, and the large dining room for the knights. Instead we hopped on the Thames River Cruise and floated down to the Westminister Pier. That gave us many photo opportunities.

Have I said it was cool and misty most of the tour--even donned rain poncho and umbrella for short spurts of rain. We returned to our hotel about 4 PM and prepared for supper. We ate at a small Italian Restaurant a block from the hotel. Having refueled, we were able to return to the hotel to dress for the theatre. We had good seats and the music was great! Bekah said it was almost as good as the Broadway show in NYC. Leon had a hard time keeping up with the story line of Wicked since he had not watched the Wizard of Oz with the grand kids as often as I had. The lead singers had great voices with very broad vocal range. The costumes and staging were the same as the Broadway production. We were all exhausted by the time we walked back to the hotel. Leon wants to sleep in and take things at a slower pace today!