Day 7 - Stonehenge and Bath.

In hindsight, I should have went to Stonehenge and Bath my first day of London instead of my last.  It is also a holiday weekend here and it was packed!  I took a bus tour out there.  We went to Bath first.... not only was there a ton of people and extra venders in the streets for the holidays, the Baths were also experiencing power failures.  They did not know why and upon arrival, they were actually closed.  Our guide gave us a walking tour and we checked back again.  They were temporarily open so we were able to get in.... but not for long.  20 minutes later they closed for the day.  Any tours that came after us were not able to get in.  So we were lucky to go through it quickly.  :-) 

People on the tour wanted to see the Royal Crescent ... apparently thats a thing.  I had no idea what it was.  lol.  

Stonehenge was another hour on the bus.  It still amazes me how they were built and why.  And no one really knows.  All just theories.   

So that was basically my day.  Most the time on a bus... dealing with crowds of people at Bath... and more crowds at Stonehenge.  Ready for the country in Scotland. :-) 

Day 6... Late night day.

So I'm a couple days behind on this blog... so I'll try to remember what I did.  lol.  Day 6....Today was the last day of my 6-day London pass.  There were a few things I wanted to see that I had missed while getting lost in London.

I started out my day by going to Shakespeare's Globe.  It's not the original, its a recreation of what they think it looked like.  It is pretty cool.  It would have been fun to see a show there... should have looked into that earlier.  oh well.

Next I hopped a train and rode out to Hampton Court Palace.  Henry VIII resided here among others after him.  I always like castles.

Then I traveled to the Shri Swaminarayan Temple - Neasden .  Unfortunately they are working on the front so I didn't get good pictures but I shared the link so you could see how beautiful it is.  I also experienced their "20 minutes" of prayer service.... it was not 20 minutes, it was 45 minutes.  so it was a good thing I didn't not have to be anywhere.  It was interesting, would have been better if I understood the language but it was good.   

I ended today very late (midnight by the time I got home) because I met up with my friend's cousin to eat some great indian food. It was really good and fun way to end the night. :-)

Friday, Day 5 in London.

Today I slept in a little.  Didn't leave until around 9am. I took the bus to find my 2nd (out of 3) dessert places... This one is called Dum Dum Donuts and they bake a donut and croissant combination and then top it with deliciousness.  The address I had was for one of their locations that actually had closed :-\  So always an adventure with me, I had to find their other location which turns out was only about 0.6 miles away... so I walked of course to that one.  I had a strawberry filled topped with white chocolate frosting and a strawberry on top.  It was messy to eat but oh so good.

I have been using an app called Citymapper.  It has been amazing! It has definitely been a lifesaver because I get lost a lot.  Anyways, after I ate my "breakfast" I headed over to St Paul's Cathedral.  So beautiful!

After that I headed across the foot bridge to Shakespeare's Globe... however I had just missed the last tour of the theater so decided I'll come back tomorrow morning and went to the HMS Belfast instead. I always like to look at ships and see how they lived on them.  Interesting fact, this ship always had a cat assigned to it living aboard.  The cat's main job was to catch the mice.   

Tomorrow I am going to Shakespeare's Globe first thing in the morning.  From there we will see ... need to find my 3rd dessert place too ;-)   

Day 4 in London...

Today I went to the London Zoo.  I love zoos and try to go to them where ever I am.  I like to see the different ways the zoos are set up and the different animals they have.  The London zoo is small but nice.  Most of their big animals are african animals. The Lemur and Monkey exhibit you could go in with them.  Very cool.

You could go right in with the Lemurs!  They are so cute :-)  

You could go right in with the monkeys too :-)  

There's usually something that makes me wonder about security from the animals at almost every zoo I go to.  At this zoo, the gorilla exhibit is the thing that got me.  It is open separated only by a moat and electric fence.  Animals are smart and this security made me think of Jurassic Park where they test the fence for weaknesses.... Then I get back today and am talking with my hostess and she says one of the gorillas got out a few months ago.  Zoo was on lockdown until it was caught.  No one was hurt luckily.  But yea... my point exactly. 

the moat and electric fence security from the powerful gorilla... 

After the zoo, I walked through the park (I tend to walk through a lot of parks) and went to Madame Tussauds wax museum.  Although a bit expensive, it was set up very cool and even had a little ride and 4D show. 

 

I have 3 places on my to-do dessert list... I decided to find one of them today.  Bubble Wrap Waffles!  Basically a bubble waffle wrapped like a cone filled with ice cream and toppings of your choice.  I had vanilla ice cream, oreos, strawberries, and nutella.