"Wait, The Queen's Dead?!"

Buckingham Palace

Lion Statue at Trafalgar Square

     Today was a very jam-packed, but super fun day! We didn't have anything but class scheduled today, so as soon as that was done we headed off into London to see a few things on our own. I went with Katherine, Amanda, and Kayley to Buckingham Palace, which was cool! We got to see the guards with the red jackets and tall furry hats, but they were inside, so we couldn't go right up to them. There was a pretty park next to the palace that we walked around in called St. James. There was a cool statue of Queen Victoria and some other smaller statues and fountains outside the palace, so we got some pictures there. We decided to walk to Trafalgar square from there, and on our way we passed a statue that said, "Queen Elizabeth, 1900-2002." One of us, I can't remember who, said something like, "She was 102 years old?" Then, I said, "The Queen's dead?!" I promise I know that the Queen is still living, but her name is Elizabeth, so you can see where the confusion might have come from.    Anyway... Trafalgar Square was awesome! It was actually one of the places I was most excited to see, because it was a place that President Hinckley visited a lot on his mission. We got a picture with one of the lion statues, and it ended up being a lot higher up than we thought! We had to help each other up, and we probably looked hilarious struggling to get up there. They've also got a clock counting down the time until the Olympics. Only 81 more days :) We won't be here during the Olympics, but we are going as a group to take a tour of the Olympic sites, and that'll be cool! We went to the National Gallery of Art next and spent a couple hours there. It was amazing! I'm not sure why we're not going there as a group. My favorite paintings were ones from Monet, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Da Vinci. Going to the gallery made me even more excited for the Louvre, which we're going to on Thursday! I'll blog more about Paris later :)

     One of our favorite places to eat is a little cafe called Pret A Manger, and they're all over the place. We don't know how to pronounce it in French, so we just say it like it sounds. It sounds pretty funny to say it like that! We got dinner there, then took the tube to the University College of London to see something pretty interesting. This guy named Jeremy Bentham donated his body to the university when he died, and they keep his body on display in the school! It's stuffed with straw, and he only has a head made of wax, because rival schools kept stealing his real head. Gross, but cool! We walked all the way to the university to see him, then when we got there he was stored away in a box! Usually he is on display, but we think that maybe he was put away because it was a bank holiday today. None of us know what a bank holiday is, but most everything was closed today because of it, so we just kept blaming everything on the bank holiday. After that disappointment, we walked to this gelato shop that Katherine wanted to show us. Do you know the muffin man? The one who lives on Drury Lane? :) We walked down Drury Lane on our way to get gelato, which was kind of cool! The gelato place is called Scoop, and it was worth the walk! We were going to go to Covent Garden next, which is in a scene from My Fair Lady, but it was getting dark by then and it had been a long day. We want to go back sometime though. I always love coming back to the centre after a long and tiring day. Even though I come home exhausted, I feel like I'm getting the most out of my experience here. I just love walking around London and finding things I didn't know about before. I'm thinking I should probably find out what a bank holiday is though :)