London Trip

I am visiting London and surrounding places all this week. London is an amazing place and so cool. I really enjoyed my visit. Next on my agenda is to do the main European continent.
But for now back to London - Here are my trip details and suggestions
First, if you are visiting England or UK, brush up on your British history. It helps identify all those Kings and Queens who have the same names but different numbers. Otherwise it will get very confusing on who is whose daughter and who is whose son.

First Day in London
Got on the Hop-On Hop-Off bus and stopped at Buckingham Palace first. Since I am visiting in July, London and all of England is very crowded with tourists. If you can stand the cold, it is best to visit in May or August. You can also see inside of the Buckingham if you visit August through September. With swelling crowds around us, we decided to skip Changing of the Guard ceremony and move on to other things. The HOHO bus is a great way to visit all sites without tiring your feet.
Next we saw the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. After taking some good shots we walked over to Westminster Abbey. We did the inside tour for about an hour. No photography is allowed inside the Abbey. It was very grand but kind of spooky since so many kings and queens are buried here.
We moved onto Trafalgar Square which was crowded. We circled the square and then moved onto the London Bridge and Tower of London. We spent couple of hours in the Tower of London touring the Crown Jewels and White Tower. It was great place to see. We did see St. Paul's Cathedral from outside but did not tour the inside. Hopefully next time, I will go atop the dome.
Towards the evening we went over to London Eye to get some great views of the city and river Thames. Unfortunately, it began raining but since we had timed tickets, we had to go. The view from top is great and should be done once.

Second Day in London
Continued seeing the city from atop the HOHO bus. Saw Hyde Park, Marble Arch, Oxford Street, Piccadilly Circus on way to British Museum. After seeing many statues and Egyptian mummies we went over to Kensington Palace and toured the inside. It was a decent tour especially since we got to see it at half price using the 2-for-1 offers that are valid with a travel card.
We did skip over a few things and did them quickly, but considering several logistics we did cover most of London in a good way.

The next week was spent doing an international course for my MBA program. The most I learnt during that week is that all shops close before 6 pm every single day in the UK. This definitely hampered my shopping adventures.

The following Saturday, we visited Stonehenge, Oxford and Windsor Castle. We did Stonehenge early in the morning and avoided the crowds. It is such an awesome place. However, we got sucked into the crowds at Oxford and Windsor. It is definitely a good idea to have at least four hours for Windsor Castle. We returned to London on Saturday evening. I walked over to Buckingham Palace so I could take some good pictures of it.

The history and architecture definitely amazed me and I loved all the places I visited. The things that surprised me were the lack of trash cans around London. It was odd that people threw their garbage into plastic bags at various points and the town workers gathered up all the garbage into the bags and then hauled them into the truck.
I loved the Cornish Pasties. They are so yummy. Overall I found the food at pubs and restaurants very tasty even though it was vegetarian. Taking the tube was very easy and doing the travel card is definitely recommended if you are getting on the tube more than once.
I found it funny that many phrases such as "mind the gap", "way out" were on souvenir t-shirts because they were funny to Americans only.