Friday was a day of tours. I’d read about and been told that the walking tours of London were worth doing and so I arranged to find one on Friday morning. The ones I had read about are every day but they differ by day. You can find all the details at www.walks.com. The one I did was the Royal London and Westminster Abbey tour. They all start at a Tube stop and you just show up, pay a fee to the tour leader and off you go. We started in Green Park and made our way down through the park to see the changing of the guard. The tour guide was very good.

The skies opened up on us after the changing of the guard and there was even some lightning and thunder. Thankfully I had an umbrella along and it wasn’t long before we were in Westminster Abbey. The Abbey has a fee to tour it unless you’re going to a service there but if you’re just going to the service you don’t actually see that much. The service seemed to be confined to one small area. Kinda strange, but it seems more of tourist spot than a church at this point.

Some very interesting memorials within the church. For example, the church is were Charles Dickens is buried. On the day I was there, June 10th, they were still commemorating the anniversary of his death (June 9th) with a couple wreaths of roses.

Our guide through the Abbey was excited to point out the ‘cartwheeling Verger’ that was about to do a service at the church. I’d never heard of him but apparently he made quite the name for himself at the recent royal wedding. See for yourself in the video.

The walking tour finished in time for me to catch the Tube over to another part of the city to join a bicycle tour group done by BrakeAway Bike Tours. I did the ‘Secret London’ tour though I’m not really sure why it’s called that. The tour was a lot of fun and while there was a bit of rain along the way, mostly it was fine. The highlight was probably the Tower Bridge and being able to bike over that. We rode from about 3:30 to 8:00. Didn’t seem possible. We made lots of stops and our tour guide and ride leader, Brian, did a nice job of explaining the sights.