London & Paris 2019 - Day 3 (9/3/2019) - Buckingham Palace

We didn't have any concrete plans this morning, so we had no reason to get up early.  Our only concern was making it downstairs in time for breakfast, which we did with plenty of time around 8:30am.  The spread was the same as the day before.  The only thing to note from the meal was that I tried Marmite and discovered that it's not for me at all (🤮).  After eating we headed up to the room to relax for a while.

While discussing what we wanted to do with ourselves, my mom decided that she wanted to go see the Bloomberg building.  I ordered an Uber and we were on our way around 11am.  At the building, we first got Mom a guest badge and then retraced my path from two days prior up to the pantry.  We hung out there for a while and then started down the spiral stair ramp.  Mom's hip began to bug her a couple of floors down, so we chose to go back up to the 6th floor and take the elevator down (instead of continuing down 4 more floors).  We went around the building to the London Mithraeum, a museum run by Bloomberg that showcases a restored Roman temple dedicated to the god Mithras that was found at the site of the building.  We were able to go on the noon viewing of the temple, which includes a dramatic audio-visual presentation and a few minutes to walk around and take pictures.  After that I ordered another Uber (which was a bit of an anxiety-inducing experience because the Bloomberg wifi didn't work out by the street) and we made it back to the hotel by 12:45pm.

We were signed up for the afternoon excursion to Buckingham Palace, and that departed by coach at 1:15pm.  This was a combined excursion, and most of the passengers were Globus clients from other tours who were staying at a couple of other hotels, in addition to 6 people from our tour and a couple of people from our hotel on another tour.  At the palace we first visited the Royal Mews, the horse stable and carriage house.  Most of the horses (all but two) were away on "holiday", but all the carriages were there for viewing.

After the Mews we got to the main attraction, an audio guided tour through the state rooms and royal apartments of the palace.  Unfortunately, though understandably, pictures were not allowed in the palace itself.  The opulent rooms are only available for public tours during July through September while the queen is away.  We finished the tour in the garden, where we paid a visit to the gift store and made a quick stop at the ice cream shop on the way out.  We were back on the bus in time for the 4:30pm departure back to the hotel (we were the second stop).

Back at the hotel we relaxed in the room for a couple of hours before heading out to dinner.  Our destination was the nearby Westminster Kitchen Grill House so that Mom could get some fish and chips, though on the way we paused briefly to watch some (anti-)Brexit protesters walking by the hotel onto Westminster Bridge.  After that encounter we continued on to the restaurant, where I had some quite bland penne in addition to the chips from my mom's order; thankfully Mom enjoyed both the fish and her creamy chicken soup starter.  From there it was back to the hotel for the night.

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Pictures: https://photos.app.goo.gl/hk6N4X5QW6gkSLxP9