London

30th August
London
We started the morning with very swish brekky. Booked a trip for Sunday and bought our tourist bus tickets for the 'hop on hop off' bus and off we set. Grey clouds and occasional raindrops but that was not about to deter us. We heard today that this summer has been the wettest London has had for 100 years!!! Oh well.... we had our raincoats.... All was going well. We were seeing lots of the well known landmarks. We drove over Tower Bridge and decided to get off on the next stop - London Bridge to take some photos of Tower Bridge and to see the Tower of London. As a kid I always remember singing London Bridge is falling down - I never dreamt that one day I would fall on IT. But fall I did in a most spectacular fashion. It seemed to take ages for me to actually hit the ground and in that time I was really concerned I would smash my camera or break my glasses. I landed on my knees and my face. My camera and glasses were fine. I took a chunk out of my nose, top lip and my chin. The worst bit was I gashed the inside of my top lip and it bled like crazy. One chap was ready with his speed dial to call an ambulance!!! I was ok. Den helped me up and made sure I was in one piece. He brushed off the dust and helped me to mop up the blood  and we got going. More slowly, and a little shakily, but going.
We walked on past the Tower of London and went on a cruise down the Thames. It was very enjoyable. A great way to get a different view of the city. We then re-joined the bus trip and went onto Buckingham Palace. As most of those things that you hear about it was very different when I actually saw it. St James Park was a nice place for a bit of lunch. My lip was still very sore and swollen but I was rather hungry so just a nibble very carefully and all was well. Back onto the bus. One of the spots the commentator mentioned was the round about in Griswalds European Vacation where Chevvy Chase gets stuck and continues going around and around - so we went around that today - but only once!!!! Past No. 10 Downing Street, and most of the streets from the monopoly board. We were also told that a decision was made way back that there would be no roads in London - streets, squares, avenues whatever but no roads - why?? well because all roads lead to Rome and that was not going to be said about London. Strange when London was settled 2,000 years ago by the Romans.
It was interesting to hear the other side of the WW2 story to the German stories re the bombing of Cologne etc. Today we heard about the bombing of London and the terrible loss of life. It was easy to see what area had been bombed as the replaced buildings were all big concrete block style buildings. It was said that every morning after the bombings (that happened every night for over 50 days in a row) Churchill asked if St Pauls Cathedral had been hit. It only took a slight hit, probably for the same reason as the huge cathedral in Cologne was left standing.
We came back to the hotel about 4pm. The swelling of my face was going down but the cut inside my lip seemed really wide, so we got the directions to the hospital and had it checked out. After a bit of a debate they decided not to do any stitching but just gave me a tetanus injection. Amazingly it was totally free seeing we were on holiday from overseas. Well that took a few hours so by 8pm we were seated at a nice little restrauant near our hotel for an easy to eat meal. Home to rest and get ready for another day in this amazing city.