Where in the World is Mrs McGhie Day 2

Hi Room 20

I had another busy day today. We started our morning with a bus tour around London central city to help us get familiar with where things are. 

We spent a few minutes visiting Trafalgar Square where we got to see Nelson's Column and the ENORMOUS lions at the bottom. You might like to find out who Admiral Lord Nelson was and why he is so important. 

There were a few pigeons at Trafalgar Square but not as many as there used to be. Apparently they used to make a huge mess all over the place so these days they have a trained hawk that gets released to fly around the square and scare the pigeons away.

The next thing we were lucky enough to do was to visit the Household Cavalry - these are some of the soldiers on horseback who guard the Queen and the royal family. We got to see the horses in the stable and some of the heavy uniforms the soldiers wear. 

They had some old uniforms from almost 200 years ago there as well. Some of the hats from that time looked like the ones in The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins! A couple of them had such large plumes that they were over 2 feet tall!

Ronan and I had our photo taken outside the Household Cavalry building with our fabulous tour guide, Maggie. She carried a big pink umbrella over her head every where we went so that we could all find her and follow her easily. Maggie was really impressed that Kirsty made Ronan - that's what we were chatting about when the photo was taken.

We also got to go to Buckingham Palace and watch the Changing of the Guard, which was really cool. My mum and I were really close to the road and had a great view. There were literally 1 000s of people there. 

We had a wee rest underneath the London Eye. It is HUGE! Ronan insisted on having his photo taken with the Eye.

We walked past an M&M store that had delicious chocolaty smells wafting out the doors and into the street. I thought several of you would love the store as it was enormous! We didn't go in though because we were in a hurry to get somewhere else.

Everywhere we go there are these bike racks full of bicycles that you can pop a coin into a rent for a while. I thought this was a good idea.

One interesting fact I learnt today is that the UK emergency number is no longer 999, it's 101 so that it is the same as the rest of Europe.

I hope you are all working hard.

Bye for now.

Mrs McGhie and Ronan.