MIND THE GAP!

Cherio Mate!,

So, I may or may not have just had the most productive/active day of my life.

I woke up at 7AM after going to bed at 2AM, and if you know me, you know how crazy that is.  Meg wasn't getting up until about 8:30, so I decided to go on a run to get a feel for the general direction of Buckingham Palace.  Of course I stopped after about 20 minutes and was informed by a nice local that I was headed in the complete opposite direction of Hyde Park and/or Buckingham Palace.  She pointed me in the right direction and 15 minutes later I was standing in front of Hyde Park...which I then realized was about 500 yards from where we were staying...go figure (I'll save my extreme distain for where our hotel puts themselves on a map, versus where they're actually located, for later).

Anyway, after I realized that the map the hotel gave us wasn't right (Atleast in terms of which way the hotel was facing) I got an idea of where to go.

Megan and I both enjoyed breakfast...which only consisted of cereal, milk, OJ, and dry toast.  Is it bad that I would consider spending most of my net worth (approx. $24.50 USD) to hire somebody to force feed that healthy breakfast down my throat every day?
Anyway...we started out on a 2 mile trek to Buckingham Palace that led us through some beautiful parts of Hyde park.  We got to BP at about 10:45 for the changing of the guard.  I thought (and so did my European travel book) that this was plenty early enough, but we were still behind 2 or 3 people at the fence of Buckingham Palace no matter where we went.  Other then the crazy French people pushing me the entire time, we enjoyed the experience.

After that we hopped on "The Tube" to West Minister Abbey and got some great pictures with Big Ben.

We were going to get on the London Eye ferris wheel until we realized it was 17 pounds a person ($25) to go on it.  Instead, we walked to Tate Modern, and along the way we stumbled upon St. Johns Cathedral.  It was defintely one of my favorite places in London, so it worked out well.  It also started raining after we walked around it, so we took refuge in a pub and were forced to drink a couple beers.

After a 30 minute walk we got to Tate Modern, and got to the 7th floor with a beer in hand.  We had a couple drinks there and then tried to make our way to the London Towers.  However, we got drenched by the rain (which lasted 10 minutes, for the third crazy down pour of the day) and decided to grab another beer at another local pub.

We got on the subway and decided to get off a stop early to get another taste of the local pub life.  We ended up at a souvenier store which sold some great souveniers (MIND THE GAP!!).

Anyway, we're getting up early tomorrow to head to Ireland.  We plan on celebrating with Rory McIlory's native contrymen when we get there on a spectacular US Open.  So, keep your fingers crossed for us.

There's more funny details to document later, but for now...I hope you enjoy!

Mind The Gap,
Mark