Our last two days in London were awesome! We started our final two days by going to the Tower Bridge and taking the elevator to the top to see the exhibition there. They had an exhibit about Olympic cities…Europe seems to have been pretty over-represented!  We also checked out the engine room below before heading over to Harrods for some good old fashioned coveting.  For those who don’t know, Harrods is a “luxury store” which basically means everything is crazy expensive…and super fun to look at.  It’s also the sort of place where one doesn’t just spray a perfume tester unless you want to get trapped discussing your scent preferences with a salesperson wanting to “match the perfume to you”!  (Unlike my backpacker’s trick of trying perfumes at duty free shops, chemists and other places…it’s nice to smell nice sometimes!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just down the road from Harrods is the Victoria and Albert museum, a huge museum that offers free 1 hour tours. These are such a great way to get a taste for a big museum without getting overwhelmed. One of the coolest things we saw was the giant “Casts Room” – here they have made plaster casts of famous stautes and relics so that they can be studied more.  Very impressive!

 

 

That night, we headed off to see the Lion King. We managed to find “reduced view” seats cheaply – and if we leaned forward, our view was perfect. Score! The musical was awesome – vibrant, colourful and with lots of fun songs.

 

 

On our last day, we took a train to Greenwich and went aboard the tea clipper “Cutty Sark”.  This has just been renovated and reopened this year – it was interesting to look around but didn’t have as much information or displays as the SS Great Britain in Bristol. (No dress-up clothes either!)

 

 

 

After the Cutty Sark, we walked up to the Observatory to stand either side of the Prime Meridian.  You can pay to do this or you can go to the little known free site just to the right of the gates…we chose the free site!

 

 

We then headed back down the river by boat to the London Eye, where we watched the sky turn dark and the lights of London come to life.

 

 

 

 

Go on…sing along…you know you want to…     HAKUNA MATATA!