London

Gabe and I scheduled a weekend layover in London on our way back home for Christmas. London turned out to be a great place to visit. It was fun to see in person all the famous things I've always just heard about. The only drawback was the prices. Things were what you would expect them to be if they were in dollars, except they were in pounds, which happen to be twice as expensive as dollars. Oh well.

London is so big that we struggled even to get to all the most famous touristy things. I think we did an admirable job though. Our first stop was the relatively new London Eye. It's a fancy ferris wheel that takes 30 minutes to go around. If you want to, you can pay to go in a car where they serve Champagne. Gabe and I opted for the more economical 15 pound option.

Here's a shot hopefully to provide a little perspective on what our journey around the London Eye was like. I have to admit it was worth the price.

The obligatory shot of the Parliament with Big Ben. You can see one of the white towers of Westminster Abbey in the background.

This is the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The blue flag means he's at home.

Gabe and I both like boat tours. The one on the River Thames was as good as any we've been on. This shot is of Tower Bridge. It was the coolest looking one we went under.

Here's proof that we visited Buckingham Palace.

The Queen's Guard at Buckingham Palace are behind that huge fence you see in the picture above. Gabe and I had always heard that you could walk right up to the Queen's Guard and they had to ignore you, but at Buckingham Palace they had a big fence to protect them. We finally found a more vulnerable guard at Saint Jame's Palace. We didn't harass him though. We just took the obligatory picture.