Trip Report! Day Two: London

Thursday was our only full day in London, so we woke up ready to cover a lot of territory. We set off first thing for Buckingham Palace. It was on the opposite corner of the park so we took the tube and got off near this thing, which turns out to be the Wellington Arch.

The walk through the park was gorgeous. We got really lucky with the weather in London. Sunny skies, perfect temperature.

There were tons of people hanging out around the palace. We sat for a while and watched the crowd before continuing to walk through the parks toward Trafalgar Square.

This arch marks the transition between the parky area and Trafalgar Square. I had no idea what it was until I just googled right now and discovered it's the Admiralty Arch. It looked pretty impressive, anyway.

Trafalgar Square is where the National Gallery & Portrait Gallery are, which are free ("suggested donation") so we decided to check those out. We weren't too impressed, honestly. The best thing I remember seeing was this famous portrait of Elizabeth I.

Ben wanted to eat some of these desserts in the cafe pretty badly, but we just had a little snack to fortify us for our journey to our lunchtime restaurant.

We ate lunch at Mildred's, a vegetarian restaurant in Soho that came highly recommended. It was pretty great. I ordered a burrito and asked, "is it spicy?" and the waiter said kind of dismissively, "It's Mexican. It's got chiles in it." I thought it was sort of hilarious to get a lecture about Mexican food from a British person. I used to live in Los Angeles!

Ben got the veggie burger of the day, which was mostly carrots, I think? And he reported that it was delicious.

After lunch we walked up to the British Museum, mostly to see the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon friezes. I thought I'd taken a picture of the Rosetta Stone but apparently not - there was a huge crowd around it, so that's probably why. I got the Parthenon, though!

The British Museum is very impressive.

We spent a lot of time there looking around. My feet were tired.

Cat mummies! There were people mummies, too, but who cares about that.

Ben was particularly into the Chinese jade and Neolithic tools and sculptures. The Museum really is packed with some pretty amazing stuff.

Ben took a nap when we got back to our hotel and I thought he looked funny.

We did dinner at Khan's, an Indian place we ran across near our hotel. The service left a little to be desired, but the food was terrific.

And that was London! We felt like we made efficient use of our London time, and were pretty anxious to get onto the Scottish part of our trip.