April 23, 2009 Tour Day 2 – London.

Another day of Sightseeing. The group was left to explore London as they wished. From what I have heard so far activities included seeing and visiting the following places and attractions:

Hyde park
Tower of London
British Museum
Phantom of the Opera
Les Miserables
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream coat
Shopping along Oxford Street
Harrods
The Canadian Pub – The Maple Leaf
Buckingham Palace
Big Ben
Boat Tour on the Thames
Seeing Miley Cyrus and Billy Ray Cyrus at a premiere
Westminster
Canadian Embassy
Camden Town Market
Shakespere Globe
London Tower
Thames River
Tower Bridge
Millennium Bridge
The Monument
Diana’s Memorial Fountain
National Art Gallery
St. Paul’s Cathedral









Because friends, family and colleagues may be following this blog, I feel that it is important to hear some stories from different members of the group. There are 36 of us right now (including Jocelyne Schellenberg, Henry’s wife, and unfortunately she will be leaving in the middle of the tour to return to Kleefield to work!) and I am overwhelmed with the amount of stories and experiences that I am already hearing about. I want to give everyone at least one chance to tell a story. So beginning today I will be working with one or two others to complete my blog entries about any given day. I am hoping that this will give you a more complete story of our experiences on tour in the UK.

From Jesse Hamm:
We (Jesse and Lisa) decided to go on the ‘Big Bus Tour.’ This open top bus tour offers three different routes all over London and you are able to get on and off the bus if you want to explore an attraction further. We got off the bus at Big Ben and Westminster Cathedral. I felt like there were so many people that it always felt like rush hour and I found it to be too crowded for my liking. The ticket also included a boat tour and so we saw London from the river Thames. We learnt a lot about the history of the area and it was neat to see the sophistication of the architecture, even though many of the buildings were so old. Some other sites we saw were big ships, Tower Bridge and the Millennium Bridge. The Millennium Bridge, a foot bridge (pedestrians only), was majestic, although it is famous because when it first opened it wobbled one foot in each direction and after two days had to be closed and re-done. It was re-opened, after seven years of upgrades.

From Brenda Peters:
On our way to find the theatre for Phatom of the Opera, we were sidetracked by a large crowd of screaming teenagers. We decided to check it out and discovered a huge crowd with a barricade and paparazzi snapping away at some unknown subject. We realized that the crowd was surrounding a cinema theatre which was featuring the premiere of the movie “Hannah Montana.” We deduced that Miley Cyrus must be at the theatre. We were about to leave when all of a sudden an announcer came to the balcony of the theatre and introduced Miley and Billy Ray Cyrus. Like one of the screaming teenagers I went running back and snapped many photos of the two of them. We eventually did make it to Phantom of the Opera and it was even better than Miley and Billy Ray.