My Month in Europe: London Day Two

This was hands down my very favorite day of the entire trip!

Well, this day and our day in the Alps, of course :)

After the day before where we were introduced to London, I already felt myself falling in love with this place, but this day just made it official!

I spent the day with these lovely people...

...and they definitely were part of the reason it was just such an amazing day.

We all had the same list of things we wanted to see, but we really just wanted it to be a relaxed day that we could enjoy.

Because we were all so laid back, we were able to enjoy every part of the day, and we ended up seeing so much more of the city than we even anticipated.

Prepare for an overload of photos!

We started off at Buckingham Palace, which is beautiful!

Of course I had to throw a Euro in the fountain, even though it wasn't the Trevi in Rome :)

From there we knew we wanted to get to Big Ben next, but instead of consulting maps we just walked in that general direction and enjoyed what we came across!

We walked through St. James' Park, and it was so delightful!
It was the perfect fall day and that park is just gorgeous.
It was there that we got our first view of the London Eye.

I really loved the homes and the businesses around St. James' Park.

It reminded me so much of 101 Dalmatians, even though I haven't seen that since I was a little girl.

We found Big Ben, and we also found the perfect spot for a few cliche telephone booth photos :)

That one is quite possibly my favorite from the entire trip!

I love those people and I love that city!

The parliament building was huge!

We were all so surprised at just how massive it was, because you only ever see photos of the Big Ben tower.

We stopped to ask this police officer some questions about the parliament building, and we couldn't resist the opportunity to take a picture with him!

Just across the street from the House of Parliament is Westminster Abbey.

Unfortunately we were there too early so they weren't open for tours yet, but I did happen to snap one little photo of it!

From there we went into St. Margaret's Church at Westminster Abbey. 

It was so stunning inside!

We then walked around a little more and saw some of the things pictured below...

I snapped a photo of that gorgeous girl as we were riding a famous red double decker bus through town to the London Bridge!

It was a really cool way to see the city from on top of the bus, and it made me really notice the beautiful architecture of the buildings.

Riding across the London Bridge was rather anticlimactic, as it is just your typical bridge, but we did get a great view of the Tower Bridge which we were headed to next.

After getting off the bus we stumbled across this cute little market in the business district right on the water.

I bought this ring at that market from the sweetest woman.

I love having tokens like that from the most random places :)

We ate lunch outside in the business district and our view was this...

The Tower Bridge!

We tried endlessly to get a picture of all of us with the bridge in the background, but it just wasn't working out so I asked a very good looking businessman to take one for us.

I may have been hoping he'd ask for my number... :)

We walked across the Tower Bridge and over to the Tower of London, which was just absolutely stunning!

I would have loved to go inside and see more of it!

They had this ceramic poppy memorial set up to honor soldiers killed in the great war.

A really good article about it, which you can find if you click here, says, "Blood swept lands and seas of red is being installed at Tower of London. Each of the poppies represents a Commonwealth soldier killed in the Great War. 

It was a really amazing thing to see!

From there we got on a boat that took us back to the other side of the city where we started at.

While on the boat we passed under the famous bridge in the beginning of the seventh Harry Potter :)

Recognize it?!

At that point it was a lot of walking and train rides to get to Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross Station!

We were pretty tired, as you can tell...

Sorry Madi! :)

Platform 9 3/4 was fun and we got some cute pictures out of it!

The gift shop was even better, and I definitely had to keep from spending money on a lot of pointless Harry Potter souvenirs!

After that it was more train rides and walking to get to Abbey Lane!

We tried and failed miserably about five times to get a half-decent picture, but due to a ton of groups waiting and the traffic, we quickly gave up.

We ended the evening by trying to find the Aston Martin dealership on Kensington High Street, but we couldn't find it so we ended up just walking around.
That shopping district is every girls dream.

We were right outside of Hyde Park and near Notting Hill, where the movie is based off of!
That part of the city was absolutely gorgeous, and one day when I'm wealthy I think I may just need to own a home there :)

It was a beautiful and relaxing evening filled with a lot of beautiful cars, running into a BYU alumni, and really good food!

This day was truly a great day!

I fell head over heels in London, and since getting home I have had more than one day where I desperately just want to go back.

A piece of my heart will always be in London!