Saturday July 16th, 2005
Europe > United Kingdom > London
Woke up about nine. It started to get too warm and bright in the room to sleep. Ate some yoghurt, toast, egg and bengali shemai. Shemai is a bengali variant of porridge - it's good!.
Our goal today was to see some of the most typical tourist traps in London.
Changing of the guards at Buckinham Palace was starting at 11.30 so that was going to be our first stop today. Moinul's uncle and the two children joined us.
The changing of the guards (or "the guard mounting") was a bit long and not much happened. Some parading and some live music for about two hours. Really, really many tourists here! Even more than Abu Simbel in Egypt :)
Moinul's uncle + children went home while we continued our sightseeing.
We took walk along the river Thames and took some photos of Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, London Eye and then ate lunch at McDonalds.
After the food intake we visited Trocadero which is a 5-stores entertainment center in the middle of London. Lot's of different games, go-cart, dance dance revolution, etc...
Then we ate dinner at an italian restaurant in the Elephant & Castle area. This was not an ordinary restaurant. It looked pretty dark inside and the door was locked but a note on the door told us to knock. After a while a girl opened the door and "yes, we're open". She seemed to be the one and only personel at this whole restaurant. (Seemed like she also made the food). We ate some bad pasta carbonara and an ok pizza.
About bombings: t's hard to notice that there's been terror bombings here not so long ago. There are very few trash bins along the streets but I don't know if that is normal here. The Central underground line is also taken out of service along with some parts of the other lines in the central part of London.
Other observations: Very few smokers here. Clean, big city. More of everything in comparison with Stockholm. Good underground: It's very extensive but easy to understand.
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