London 2

 TRAINS, PLANES AND STORMS

We managed to sleep in a bit. Well Roz did anyway. She set an alarm and when it went off she promptly smacked it off and went back to sleep  so around 9:45 she comes out and says, "I needed to get up but turned my alarm off." and I said, "No worries. I would have made sure you were up by 10." We had to vacate the  apartment by 11. Have I mentioned Roz is a night owl. I see afternoon naps in her future.

We headed down to Victoria station where they had a luggage storage place. Expensive but better than lugging our backpacks around as our flight wasn't until 6pm. We thought to head for the airport on the high speed train around 3 so we had a few hours to kill.
We went off to check out some old buildings.
 First stop was me seeing this beautiful building and dragging Roz over to it. It turned out to be Westminster Cathedral. I had a quick peak inside and it is so beautiful. It is also under restoration so that is a stop for next visit to London.
I found this build such a contrast to the buildings around it.See it in the middle if all that glass.
A stop by Westminster Abbey. 
Then a lovely walk in St James park.
Buckingham Palace at one end of the lake 
and the old city at the other end.
Buckingham Palace. Did you know that this was actually the Duke of Buckingham's place in 1698. In 1762  George III bought it as a family home for Queen Charlotte and his children and it wasn't until his son George IV decided to remodel it into a palace. The work was very expensive and George died before it was finished. It was finally occupied by Queen Victoria supposedly to get away from her mother. Queen Victoria occupied it until the death of her husband. When she avoided it by living in Windsor Castle. Today it is considered a working palace.

Statue of Queen Victoria in front of Buckingham Palace.
 We were lucky enough to see the changing of the guard. Not the big fancy ceremony but the daily one.
We headed to Gatwick airport for our plane to Prague. One really weird thing about airports here is that they don't post the departure gate until close to boarding time and they can also change them so it can send you scrambling to your gate. We boarded our plane on time. Roz and I got on and we're sitting  close to the front when all of a sudden the skies let lose sideways. We had to walk outside to board our plane and people were coming in soaked. I guess a nasty storm had appeared and all flights were grounded. We sat on the tarmac for 1 1/2 hrs but the pilot was great about keeping us updated and he said we could make up time. When we arrived in Prague our gate was occupied. As the pilot announced "We couldn't get a break." Roz's friend Karolina picked us up and our adventure in Prague was on.

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