Walked & Walked!

Covent Gardens Market

Flowers By Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace

We decided to head onto Covent Garden today. We got on the underground at about 9:30 am and all was fine until about three quarter way into the trip the train stopped. I'm still not sure what the exact reason was but we were stopped for about 40 minutes! There was nothing to do but wait! Also London subways have a problem with heat so people were sweating! We were glad to get moving again.

Covent Garden (not a garden at all) is a neat area with market stalls, cafe's, and street entertainers. This was the site of the first Punch and Judy show in the 1600's so it has a long tradition of street entertainment. We watched a guy juggling kives in a kilt, walked around and quickly got lost in the maze of small streets! After we ended back at Trafalgar Square we were hungry so we ended up going back to the Cafe In The Crypt for lunch which was good and very reasonable.

After lunch we decided to walk to Buckingham Palace along the Mall. There were lots of cars parked along the way and we ended up seeing alot of formally dressed people going into the Palace for a Garden Party! Very interesting. Did not see the changing of the guard though. The area around the Palace is beautiful and grand. We hung around, watched the people going into the Palace but did not know who anyone was of course. We then decided to walk to Marble Arch and Oxford Street to go to a particular shop we had heard alot about so we walked along Hyde Park and this walk was long! We wanted to go to Primark which is a very cheap store and has been the subject of controversy as they state they are against child labor etc. The store was packed with shoppers. I did buy a cheap umbrella as I'm sure the rain will be here again! Got the underground back to the Hostel - no problems this time!