What a difference a full night of sleep makes. Our bed is wonderful, and we both woke up around 8 on our own. So we took our turns in the shower (it's a shared bathroom a half floor down), and hit the breakfast downstairs. Wow, that was a spread. The English Breakfast is a bit... huge. I think tomorrow I'll have him omit a few entries. By 10:30, we were out of the hotel, but not quite out on the town. First order of business was dropping off our laundry. We found a place after a bit of looking, and by 11 or so, we were finally under way, mindful that we had until 7 to pick up our clothes. Unsure on what we wanted to do first, we chose the Tower of London, so we hopped the tube and made our way to the tower. Heed my advice, buy your tickets in the Trader's Gate next to the tube stop, or in the Welcome center just west of the long, long ticket lines. In the Welcome center, you have to pay by credit card, but at £17 a ticket, you're probably going to want to charge it anyway. We walked into the main gate around noon, just as a guided tour with the Yoeman Warder (more popularly known as the Beefeater) guided tour of the tower. This was great -- our Yoeman Warder was fantastic, entertaining, and informative. The hour flew by. I highly recommend visiting the Tower, if only for the tour. After the tour, we visited the White Tower for an exhibit on Henry VIII's armor throughout the years. It was quite interesting (and quite full of stairs). After three floors of armor, and one floor of gift shop (that's how they getcha), we wandered outside in time to see a guard change at the Crown Jewel house. The line for the jewels was tremendously long, and we knew it was twice as long inside, but it seemed a shame to not go in, so we got in line. Well, while the line may be long, it moves steadily, and before we knew it we were inside, moving through the serpentine queues watching videos and eventually making it to the moving sidewalk that gently glides you past the jewels. They're pretty impressive, for a bunch of shiny metal and glittery rocks. After a quick lunch at the cafe, we made our way out of the tower and onto one of the Thames river cruises, this one taking us from the tower back to the Westminster pier, in front of Parliament and Big Ben right around 5. We stopped off at a pub across the street from the Parliament building (St. Stephen's Tavern, full of businessfolk just getting off from their workday) before ultimately catching a bus that took us to within a few blocks of the laundry. We got there just in time, and lugged the clothes back to the hotel by way of a dingy pub with mediocre beer that simply isn't worth mentioning, and a cute little park that took up half a city block. After a brief period of panting on the bed (no, not what you think, it was from lugging all out clothes up all those stairs, we headed back out and just down the road to the Ebury Wine Bar and Restaurant for supper. Pricey, fancy, schmancy. Good meal, though -- the wine was quite nice. Tomorrow, we've got another full day. We plan to visit the British Library, we have a BBC tour at 3, and hope to spend the evening at the Parliament building. Also, we'll mail out postcards that have no chance of arriving before we get home, but it's what we do. :) Will post pics another night, I'm just beat and it's after midnight now. Cheers!