The trip part 2

My sister Miss M had booked us for two very 'touristy' outings for our second day in London; The London Eye and Buckingham Palace. So, the London Eye is just a very big ferris wheel, moving very slowly around and around. It wasn't a terribly clear day, the lower cloud deck was encroaching on the skyscrapers in the distance and there was that unmistakable European haze that I had missed so terribly....not. Being a Tuesday, it wasn't terribly busy. Miss R and I jagged a capsule with a group of 4 Italian tourists, which was lucky as the next capsule was packed full of pensioners probably on their annual day trip. So there I was pointing out all the landmarks to Miss R who, I figured out, had absolutely no idea what I was crapping on about. Oh look, it's Charing Cross Station, Tower Bridge, The Soda Bottle Building, Buckingham Palace etc etc.... ......where where where?? Was the typical response. From the eye, we walked across to the Embankment for the first of what was to become many a pathetic excuse for coffee. I guess we might be spoilt here in Melbourne with the quality of coffee, but I guess what you don't know won't hurt you, and the people in London have obviously accepted mediocre coffee as how it should be. Newsflash people!!! Coffee should not be served so hot that it scalds your hands through a ceramic mug, (or later we were to find coffee so cold that it might as well have been a coffee Big M) don't let the espresso shot run through too long, and for the love of god, where's the taste??? After forking out the equivalent of $18 for two coffees and a muffin, we moved on. We walked up to Covent Garden, around to Leister Square and to Picadilly Circus. I was to find out later from my Grandmother that my great-great (I think)-uncle cast the bronze statue of Eros in the middle. Good job too! We walked onto Trafalgar Square which I had not seen since the road in front of the British Portriat Museum had been closed. We were scheduled to a 2pm tour of Buckingham Palace, so we managed to get there just in time. Obviously, the tour wasn't to go through the entire building, but it did wind its way through some pretty impressive areas. The first was the courtyard area where foreign dignitaries and the like get greeted by HRH. TO be honest, the front door was a bit of a let down. I would've expected giant Corinthian columns and the like, not what amounted to a dodgy glass lean to. Anyway, inside we were treated to a number of rooms, many of them quite dark and full of old, and lets face it, quite uncomfortable furniture. The big exhibit was the setting for a state dinner. Apparently it takes upwards of four days to set the tables for a state dinner and you can really see why. Each knife and fork etc is set using a measuring tape which smacks of OCD at the highest level. The setting they had set up was for 300 guests (I think). And the washing up??? All done by hand using a sink and a bottle of Fairy apparently. Wouldn't want to put all that gold leaf edged Royal Dalton through the dishwasher I guess.