First Day in London

Well, today we had  good plan, but then reality set in.  The one event I did not pre-book tickets for was the Winston Churchill War Rooms.  Big Mistake.  We arrived there just after 10:00 and were told there was a long wait.  Well by 11:30 the line was still quite long and we feared missing our scheduled time at The Shard so we decided to leave and pre-book tickets for later in the week  So we walked around St James Park for a while where we observed the pelicans, then headed for The Shard.

On our way, we passed Big Ben.  You may have heard that it is being renovated.  We hoped we could still see it, but no way, as you can tell from this picture.  There is no part of this famous clock that remains visible.

After a ride on the Tube we bought lunch from a street vendor then took a picture of The Shard from the London Bridge. The Shard is the highest  observation platform in London.  We rode to the top and spent quite a while taking in the view from over 800 feet high.  This was a great alternative to riding The London Eye for a third time.  Here you can see The Eye and Buckingham palace from atop The Shard.

Since we finished earlier than expected, we headed back to our room for a bit before going to Westminster Abbey for Evensong.  We love going to Evensong -- beautiful liturgy in a gorgeous setting makes for a special worship experience.  After a stop in the gift shop we had supper at a Chinese restaurant, then back to our hotel for the night.  We determined that we could do the War Room early Thursday afternoon but when I checked on pre buying tickets, only 1 ticket at 1:30 was available and none for Friday morning.   So we can scratch that activity from our plans.
After walking over 15,000 steps today we are hoping for a few less as we head to Windsor Castle tomorrow!