We’ve returned from a pretty epic roadtrip through the United Kingdom. With over a thousand photos taken from driving from one end of the UK to the other, this is going to take a little bit of time to cover.

Let’s bypass the hairy first night of driving on the other side of the road while sitting on the opposite side of the car. I may have grown a white hair from that experience. We landed around 2:30 PM and ended up at our hotel (next to the Tower of London) around 5:30 PM. The first thing we did after dropping off our luggage was run to the Thames River to look at the Tower of London and Tower Bridge.

Ooh. Aah. We certainly don’t have that in Arizona. Arizona did buy the wrong bridge from London though (it sits across Lake Havasu)…

I think we passed out shortly thereafter but it didn’t take us long to get over the jet lag & time zone because the next day we traipsed all over London! Big Ben, 10 Downing Street, the Portrait Gallery, Churchill War Rooms, St James Park…

View enlarged – Parliament & Big Ben from the Tower Bridge.

Big Ben sprouting out of husband’s head.

Westminster Abbey

Playing the tourist.

Do people really use these or are they used predominately by us tourists to take photos in?

I must say, these guards, horses & the beefeaters have a lot of patience with all the tourists crowding them.

Trafalgar Square, near the Portrait Gallery. No photos in the Portrait Gallery, it was extremely crowded, probably because it was free!

Strolling through St. James Park.

Cottage in the park.

Buckingham Palace

We stopped for sustenance at this awesome Sherlock Holmes themed pub. The interior has memorabilia & photos of all things Sherlock Holmes. There’s also a mini museum behind glass windows that you can peek into while dining.

We spent some time in Churchill’s War Rooms. The amount of artifacts and info in that museum is overwhelming. You could spend hours and hours in there learning:

All in all, a successful first day exploring London!