Ben and Jane Trip to England 2018, Day 1

After Ben had been in England for 10 days, I met him at Heathrow airport.  Luckily, my flights went as we had planned and we got to the airport about the same time and managed to find each other pretty easily.  The bathrooms on my flight stopped working and so they didn't serve us breakfast, plus Ben had been up since 4:30 and hadn't eaten anything, so we grabbed a pastry and coffee at the airport and got caught up with things.  This is what a conversation with a 17 year old can look like!!!!

After we were caffeinated, we headed off to find our hotel.  We dropped our things off and caught the bus back to the airport to get the underground into London.  For anyone who knows me well enough it won't come as any surprise to know our first port of call was Covent Garden and the Punch and Judy!!!

 Yes, you can look at the menu....

 ...but when in England

 You've just got to have fish and chips!!!!!

Covent Garden had some really nice barrows this year, definitely reminiscent of when it was a thriving market

 Ben wanted to go down to Buckingham Palace, so we headed off on foot (unusual for me cos I usually rely on the underground to get around-much easier with Google maps now!!)  We walked past St Martin in the Fields church to Trafalgar Square

 Lots of tourists around this year with the beautiful weather, plus we were there at peak tourist time

 We made it down to Buckingham Palace, took a few pictures of the gates, etc

 Then, we headed over to the river.  We walked past Westminster Abbey.  I don't think I have been over there in a very long time

 We didn't have time to go in and look around, but I definitely need to go back one day

 We made it down to the London Eye.  It really has turned into a massive tourist attraction

 We walked across the bridge by the Houses of Parliament, Ben was very disturbed that Big Ben is getting cleaned and was surrounded by scaffolding

 Looks like the Houses of Parliament are getting spruced up too!!!!

We lasted until the middle of the afternoon and then just had to go back to the hotel and rest.  It was a long day for both of us.  We ate dinner in the hotel because we were too tired to go out again!!!!