London Day 6 - (part 2) Buckingham Palace, Harrods, Charlotte Street party

After the Eye and the Aquarium, we were all hungry. We wandered around Westminster, vaguely heading for Buckingham Palace, but mostly looking for food. The first place we found was - "The Texas Embassy".

Normally I'd have avoided such a touristy theme place, but we were all hungry and tired. Turns out they make pretty good quesadillas. Susan asked if she could get a discount if she produced an authentic Texas driver's license, but they didn't buy it. The place was huge, with a second floor with two large bars - I bet they get a good crowd in there on a Saturday night.

After lunch, Buckingham Palace. The guards were nice to us here, too.

While we were hanging around in front of the palace, Sean and I could just barely hear a noise in the distance - bagpipes? We left the others, and headed off following the sound. A half mile away, around St. James's park, we found the pipers. They were tuning up, and there were other people getting off of busses - it looked like they were organizing a parade. We waited around for some action, but nothing happened, so we rejoined our gang at Buckingham.

Our last stop was at Harrods (mandatory if travelling with women). The boys didn't want to go shopping at all, so I enticed them into it by asking if they wanted to go to the store where Mr. Bean had gone shopping for Christmas Lights. (Those of you who haven't watched Mr. Bean with boys should consider themselves fortunate.)

I think Sean was the only one who bought anything, a neat little magic trick that makes coins appear and disappear. I think it's a good souvenir, since it needs a pair of 10p coins to work.

The evening of the day that my folks left London, there was a street party on Charlotte Street, about 50 yards from our apartments. This is one of the three bandstands, another was directly out our window.

We went down and walked through the crowd while looking for dinner (somewhere else). When we went to bed, early as usual, the party was in full swing. I dreaded trying to sleep with the rock and roll throbbing through the walls, but I think we all nodded off quickly. It had been a busy week.

The Charlotte Street party looked very fun. All the restaurants (of which there are a lot) had tables set up in the middle of the street, and the many pubs had crowds reaching across the street to the far sidewalks. At the left edge of this photo someone set up an oyster bar. (Scott has a bag of cookies though, not oysters.)

Even though the Charlotte Street party has a web site, I still don't know why they threw it.