First off Happy 11th anniversary to my favorite trip buddy! We woke up about 8am or so and I had gotten a pretty solid night’s sleep. I think I did keep Becky up with my moving and snoring though so she got a little less sleep. Today’s main scheduled thing was a Coronation Tea at cafe behind Westminster Abbey (Ben and Jen this is where we ate after touring the abbey) at noon. Since we had time we got ready and packed and checked out of the hotel and had them hold our luggage. We went over to Trafalgar square and only had one case of leaving Becky behind at a train station. Don’t worry she found me at the next station! We decided we were hungry and ate some breakfast sandwiches at a little cafe nearby. We decided to do a Rick Steves walking tour of Westminster that normally goes from Parliament to Trafalgar Square. We did it starting at Trafalgar square due to wanting to be at the abbey cafe by noon.

The tour was good and went by the Horse Guard and Number 10 Downing street and on down Whitehall to Big Ben.

We looped across the bridge which let me get some cool shots of Big Ben and the parliament building.

By this time it was approaching noon so we headed over to the cafe for tea. Tea was fun and a bit posh feeling for us but had a good selection of sandwiches and sweet and savory bites. Becky got Earl Gray and I got English Breakfast tea.

After tea we debated between trying to brave the huge line for Westminster Abbey or going to the Churchill War Rooms museum and after finding the Abbey tickets were sold out for today so we headed to the War Rooms which also had a huge line (teach us to not book ahead I guess). This lead though to an even better compromise I think as we headed back to Trafalgar Square and remembered the National Gallery which is also free! We made our way pretty much through the whole museum and saw works from so many big masters like Rafael, Michaelangelo, and Leonardo DaVinci. We were just missing something from Donatello to round out my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle bingo card. We also saw world by Monet, Manet, Toulouse-LauTrec, Van Gogh and many many others.

They also had an interesting exhibit on art involving Francis of Assisi which had everything from old paintings to movies and even a comic book about him. Well worth the price of admission! After the museum we headed to collect our luggage and get to the train station for our train to Liverpool.

I finally after 3 trips to London got my first pasty which we got for a snack on the train. 5/5 would eat again! On arrival in Liverpool we went straight to the hotel to check in. This was slightly impeded by 2 youths playing in the revolving doors and blocking ours and everyone else’s entry or exit from the hotel.

Eventually the hotel staff opened another door for us and then ran them off. We had a bit of an adventure finding dinner as we went over to Albert Docks to a fish and chips place but despite Google’s insistence it was closed. We took a bus back nearer our hotel and hit the jackpot with Johnny English fish and chips. The staff were super nice and we left stuffed and happy.

After that we headed back to the hotel to wind down and get ready for game day tomorrow.