Day #5: Tea On a Bus

When you're in London one thing people insist you MUST do is afternoon tea. I was fine with that, but the concept of daintily sipping tea and eating food didn't sound much different than having lunch or dinner in a restaurant - just a different time of day. So, I went with Option B - tea on a bus. Brigit's Bakery offers tea in a double-decker red bus, tour of London included. Sounded like a pretty fun option so I went for it. Pictures below....  :) 

Uptown London (Central London? Downtown London?) 

The lighting for this pic was just too perfect. House of Parliament and Big Ben 

Fountain at Trafalgar Square 

The residences here are beautiful. Only a few million each.....  :) 

Another house pic. 

Harrods! I don't have a winning lottery ticket so I'm not going in, but the crowd outside was massive. 

The amount of times I've gone past Big Ben on this trip. Every time I do it I mentally quote Chevy Chase - "Look kids, there's Big Ben!" 

My spot on the bus 

Teas I could choose from. I chose the Berry to start, then switched to the English Breakfast. Definitely preferred the second. 

My tea sweets 

The bus! I'm sure it's just because CLT isn't as big a town as other places, but seeing how close the bus got to other cars, bikes, etc on the road made me very, very nervous..... 

Storytime: After tea, I did a little shopping. My main plans for shopping are tomorrow, but I did treat myself to a Longchamp bag today. I was trying to decide between a black bag or navy bag, and started a conversation with the other ladies at the counter to get their opinions. The two ladies to my right were in full hijab and abaya, the ladies to my left were speaking a foreign language to themselves & English to me. Point being - we were three very different groups of people. However, it was a great discussion. I ended up buying the black bag, the ladies to my right liked it so much they also bought one, and the ladies to my left bought the navy one. We may all be different in terms of religion, place of origin and belief systems, but fashion is one of the great unifiers. That and a smile. :) 

New Bond Street - one of the fancy dancy shopping streets in London. It's worth it to enlarge the picture and see how many luxury name brands you can count. And all with black-suited security guards at the entrance......

Went past Liberty of London while I was walking today. Those at the street corner probably heard me muttering "I do NOT need any more fabric. I do NOT need any more fabric...... " 

Tomorrow is my shopping day, then Hamilton at night (I really, really want to see how it goes over here). London has several stores that CLT doesn't, so it's a good opportunity to see and handle things in person, instead of going off of tiny pictures on the internet. I mean, while I'm here.....