Covent Garden outing

(Photo 1) The view outside the window at breakfast


(Photo 2) The girls ready for their photo shoot


( Photo 3) a funny sign in the tube station


(Photo 4) When Amy took this picture a voice boomed over the loud speaker not to use flash for security purposes. Apparently we were standing under a security camera at the time!



(Photo 6) A crowd gathers in Covent Garden to watch a street perfomer.


(Photo 7) our favorite store of the day




( Photo 10) With Amy's initials being AMT, Hallie and Amy knew that they must try something here




(Photo 13) The view outside our window at night


(Photo 14) The Tower Bridge lit up at night

(Photo 15) Amy working away on the blog-so far so good in London. Danny, I want one of these computers next year for Christmas!!)


The day started out bright and beautiful with white puffy clouds and another blue sky. The girls were scheduled for a group picture this morning in uniform with the Tower Bridge in the background. This took place after breakfast so Sara Beth and I planned the day while we waited for them. We had a free day today and we knew we wanted to go back to Covent Garden for shopping. The high was predicted to be 39 degrees so we bundled up and headed out. When we arrived at the tube station, we discovered that the line we were to connect to was suffering a significant delay due to a person under a train. That required a quick consultation of our tube map to determine an alternate route. Riding the tube isn’t near as complicated as we thought it might be. We switched trains three times without difficulty, “minding the gap” as we were instructed when we got on and off the tube, and found our way back to Covent Garden. We had a lot of fun weaving between kiosks and exploring the different stores along the way. Hunger hit pretty quickly and we used the vouchers provided by the tour to eat pizza for lunch. While we shopped, we kept finding ourselves walking into people and realized that we were not walking on the “correct” side of the street. People walk on the street just like they drive their cars. However, they stay to the right on an escalator to enable people to pass on the left if they choose to walk up. If you pay attention, it is easy to adjust. Our hands down favorite shop of the day was a colorful boutique named Octopus with a collection of whimsical artistic items from jewelry to hairbrushes to serving pieces. Sara Beth resisted the urge to buy a beautiful tray for fear it would not fit in her suitcase. Hallie and Amy had hot chocolate at the AMT coffee shop. It was delicious and just perfect for warming up in the early afternoon. Gaiten cashed in on a sale at Guess finding a beautiful purse, which is one of her favorite accessories. The girls have found the British equivalent of Claire’s called Accessories and we seem to have visited every location we have passed. We have heard much from our guide about the economic downturn in London’s economy. However, we found the streets crowded with shoppers looking for bargains in the shops at Covent Garden. We also found a really cute sweet shop named Candy Cakes. They had muffins (which we thought were cupcakes) frosted with fondant. Gaiten got a “berry”one and when she asked what it tasted like, the lady at the counter told her it tasted like “berry”! Gaiten said it was very good. We shopped until the sun went down and headed back to the hotel to turn in for an early night. The girls were scheduled to attend a river boat disco cruise down the Thames River with the tour, but they opted out for their bed. Yesterday, Sara Beth read in the newspaper about the large air strike in the Gaza Strip. Tonight as we exited the subway we saw a poster and a TV news report about large protests in the Kensington area of London. Thankfully, it is contained to the area surrounding the Israeli embassy and gave us no trouble today. Tomorrow will be an early day with the tour as we go by bus to the county of Berkshire with a visit to the Royal City of Windsor.