Bus Touring in London

So the post today will be cautionary for all of those who think it's a good idea to hire one of those guided bus tours to see town.  Lindsay and I have been hanging out, enjoying the city for the past few days, so we figured we should do more sightseeing today.  In particular, Lindsay wanted to see Buckingham Palace, and tickets were sold out, so we opted to do a group tour, where tickets are included.  Our concierge sold us on a package of St Paul's and Buckingham Palace, where we would be accompanied by an expert guide to enhance our experience.  This was only slightly more expensive than buying entries to each of the attractions individually, and Buckingham Palace was sold out, so this seemed like a great idea.  We booked it.

What a disaster of a morning ... First stop for us was at the Waldorf this morning at 8am, where we met a bus that transfered us to Victoria Station to meet with our actual tour group.  The bus smelled like bad breath and stopped at several hotels along the way, so what could have been a 10 min tube ride to Victoria Station turned into an excrutiating 45 minute ride where both Lindsay and I started to get car sick.

We then embarked on our guided tour of what we thought would be St Paul's and Buckingham Palace, only to spend 2 hours driving around London with our tour guide rambling off random facts about things we were passing and yelling at various passengers to keep quiet.  She also constantly stopped to yell at the driver to take a different route, which was odd considering this should be a tour they do all the time.  She was an older woman, looked classically British with a seersucker suit, and seemed like the type of person to keep company with a lot of cats (that was my hypothesis anyway).  Well, needless to say, 2 hours of driving around central London without a break was not what I needed given I was already feeling sick from the morning drive.

We finally arrived at St Paul's, only to learn that Sunday is a day for services so there would be no guided tour.  We could simply wander around the outside and in the back of the church, but no pictures inside!  Our tour guide made a point on several occasions to ensure we knew this was the last bathroom break until after the Buckingham Palace Tour.  Honestly, this seemed like the primary reason that we stopped there since we had already walked around St Paul's a few days ago.

Rather than book this "tour", we should have attended one of the sung services, which we caught a bit of while we were there.  The church is magnificent and the sounds of the choir echoing through the rafters was absolutely beautiful.  Definitely worth experiencing if you're in town.

Westminster Abbey

So off we finally go to what we thought would be Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guard.  But again, another detour to Westminster Abbey, where weren't allowed to enter, but we could snap some shots from the outside.  This is the church where all Royals have their funerals and coronations, but they can actually choose to get married wherever they want.  While most choose to get married here, Diana was actually married at St Paul.

By this point, I just needed to be off the bus cause I really wasn't feeling well, so I got off and walked around a bit before we finally made our way to Buckingham Palace.  I snapped the picture on the left.

Ok, Lindsay and I thought, it's been a rough morning, but here we are.  This is what we joined the tour to do  - see Buckingham Palace and the Changing of the Guard.  We had to endure a very long and painful morning, but we were finally here.  So we followed our guide's ridiculous pink umbrella (with pigs all over it) into the sea of people waiting to get a glimpse of the two processions, which only happen every 48 hours.  Lindsay and I found a pretty good spot just one row back from the barrier exactly where our guide told us was the best viewing position.

Everything seemed great, but then ... uh oh, I'm really not feeling so well.  I try to tell myself it's no big deal.  We take pictures of the first procession.  Then we wait another 10 minutes for the second procession.  Lindsay checks on me - "are you sure you're ok?"  Yes, I tell her, I'll be fine.  But then I realize that I won't be fine.  Just as the second procession is marching past our position, I realize that I'm going to be sick.  I tell Lindsay we need to go NOW and begin charging out of the crowd we were in, looking for an open space.  I try to be polite and ask nicely to make way, but the crowd is converging on our position trying to get a shot of the procession, so I finally give up and start b-lining it through the crowd.  I figured a little push was better than the alternative.  I finally reach a reasonably clear location and let it go all over the Buckingham Palace fence.  Ugh, it was awful.

The Changing of the Guard

So at that point, I pulled myself together and decided I could make it through the tour of Buckingham Palace.  To my surprise I learned that our guide was not giving us a tour herself (which I honestly wasn't that upset about), and would be simply dropping us off for an audio tour (which everyone visiting the Palace receives).  We finished the tour and I have since been recuperating from an awful, but in hindsight, amusing morning.  Moral of the story - book your tours of monuments/attractions ahead of time and don't use guided bus tours in London.  They are awful.

Following the Palace Tour in the Buckingham Palace Gardens - what a morning!