Day 40 - Museums & friends

Big Ben

Our first full day in London was fun and we managed to do heaps of stuff!  Picked up an all-day tube pass and we were off.  First to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery.  The gallery is huge, so we did the "highlights tour" in Char's 10-year-old guidebook...  it was mostly the same.  :P  Some very awesome paintings in there!  Unfortunately Picasso's "sunflowers" is currently out on loan, but saw enough others to make up for it.

Walked over to Picadilly Circus and had a pizza & polenta chips lunch (yum!).  Ended up buying a couple books while we were in the area, been trying to read some books by local authors as we travel between countries and it's been fun so far (and the bookstore was having a "buy 1 get 1 half-off" sale) - about halfway through Angelmaker now and it's great!

Next up was a walking tour from Big Ben towards Trafalgar Square, seeing highlights like Big Ben, the Parliament Buildings, 10 Downing Street, and Old Scotland Yard.  Did see some giant side-of-the-bus ads for Defiance, which was neat (the show's actually good!).  After that we nipped up for some shopping at the unique Liberty store.

Cool decorations in Liberty

Finally we met up with a co-worker of mine for dinner.  Good to see Al again (and to meet his wife), and to catch up on all the work gossip.