A Teacher and a Librarian walk into a bar...: London- Day 1

I thought I'd try to do a post a day during our trip- I'll see if I can keep it up. That way I can let everyone know what we're up to, and it'll be a nice record for Logan and me to remember everything we saw and did on our adventure.
Today was our first full day in London. It was a busy day, and I feel like we really saw a lot.
But before I get into that, here are a few photos of our room. We're staying in the residence hall of the Marylebone Campus of the University of Westminster. It's a nice quiet room (which is apparently difficult to find in London), and a good price too. Here's a shot from our third floor room looking out at the garden and street below. There is a hospital on the next block, so we know where to go if we need medical attention!

Here is our door and closets on the right:

Here's my bed (we have two twins. Not long enough for Logan, unfortunately.)

Here's my desk- Logan's desk and bed are to the right of the shot. The room is divided down the middle by the blue bulletin board beneath the curtains, and each side is a mirror image of the other.

It looks like a typical dorm room. Nothing fancy, but it's clean, close to the Underground (Baker Street station, with a statue of Sherlock Holmes out front), and it's a good price.
When we got up this morning we stopped in Starbucks for some coffee (I know, not very British of us...) and then went a few doors down to the Tesco Express market for some breakfast- a chocolate croissant for Logan and a blueberry muffin and fruit for me. Then we headed on the tube down toward the Thames to try to find a tourbus that we could take. We ended up getting the Original Tour company bus. For one price you can hop on and off their buses (with commentary- some live, some recorded) for a 24 hour period, as well as free walking tours and a Thames boat cruise. We saw a lot of London that way today- hopping on and off the buses.
Our first stop was St. Paul's Cathedral. Such a beautiful HUGE cathedral with a large underground chapel and crypt. We walked the 300+ stairs to reach the whispering gallery, which isn't a place for those who are afraid of heights.
After touring the cathedral we got some pre-made sandwiches and potato salad from the market across the way and ate on the steps of St. Paul's. It was really nice weather today- almost too warm sometimes.
Here's the front of the cathedral:

Here's Logan's sandwich at lunch- he had Oak smoked Scottish salmon and soft cheese on wheat bread. He said it was good...

Here's me feeding the pigeons at lunch. I usually don't feed the birds, but I had to in this case. In the movie Mary Poppins, St. Paul's is the cathedral that Mary Poppins sings about in the song "Feed the Birds" when she takes Jane and Michael to visit their father at the bank where he works. So, I had to feed the birds myself. I knew my sister, a big Mary Poppins fan, would appreciate this! (Sorry you have to turn your head to see the photo- for some reason the computer wouldn't rotate it for me. There are a few more like it below.)

We saw this ice cream truck parked outside St. Paul's, and we had to take a photo. Gotta love the British signs: Mind That Child!

This is what our bus looked like. We rode on top most of the time for a good view of the sights (and for the cool air!)

In the afternoon, we saw the front of Buckingham Palace. The palace isn't open for tours now, since the Queen is in residence right now, so we couldn't go inside. But we did get to see the guards out front, and they're only there when she is, so it worked out well.
Here's Logan at the monument across the walkway from the palace: (By the way, Logan wore his Humboldt State t-shirt today and got two comments on it from people who actually know where it is! One of the people went to HSU herself.)

Guard in front of the palace- I took this with my big zoom lens. I was actually probably about 150 feet away.

There are several more things we saw today that I won't include photos of: we crossed the Tower Bridge twice (once on bus, once on foot), saw the outside of the Tower of London (decided not to spend the money to go inside), saw Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, saw the original Hard Rock Cafe, went on the Thames Cruise (where it was my turn to get motion sick...), and drove by Westminster Abbey (we'll probably go inside tomorrow).
One recurring theme of the day was lion statues. We saw lots of them- all different styles- but they were all beautiful. This lion is at Trafalgar Square next to the statue of Admiral Nelson (you can tell how big it is by looking at the little girl sitting between its paws):

This one was my favorite of the day. It's on the eastern end of the Westminster Bridge near the London Eye. His facial expression reminds me of Clark when he's nervous!

Our last stop of the day was the British Museum. It's free to the public, and was open until 8:30 tonight (nearly everything else closes by 6pm), so we decided to look around. The most famous exhibit in the museum is the Rosetta Stone. It's the first thing we saw when we walked into the first exhibit hall. It's lovely, but almost looks fake- it's hard to believe it's so old! We also saw lots of ancient Greek statues and ruins, and lots of Egyptian mummies too. Here's a picture of the outside of the museum.

We stayed at the museum until just about 8:30, and then went off in search of some dinner. We ate at a place called The Ultimate Burger. It was really good, and was our first real English dining experience (although our waitress was Russian!) Here's their website: http://www.ultimateburger.co.uk/
Lastly, a few random photos from the day. Logan and I agree that the best part of travelling to another country is just seeing the differences in daily life. How everything works and how it looks is so fascinating. Here is what the "don't walk" sign looks like on the streets: