The Queen's Jubilee and PICTURES!

Today I took a bus to London with a bunch of friends for the Queen's Jubilee.  Luckily, I can show you all pictures!  Not because my camera showed up =(  still working on that...  but because one of my friends has almost the exact same kind of camera but isn't really a fan of taking pictures apparently.  I was more than happy to oblige however-  

Also lucky, was that one of my friends has a friend in the city who has been living in London since January.  Apparently one of our friends showed him around when he first got there, and so he was happy to return the favor to us now.  So we basically got an all day tour through London.  It was rainy and gloomy, but that's London.  We sucked it up and saw the entire city in a day.  It was nuts, and incredible.  Here are the highlights:

First we went to Buckingham Palace.  I've been looking forward to going there since forever.  As we were approaching the gate, I got so excited, trying to figure out ways to crack the guards.  Just when my ideas couldn't get any more outrageous I saw this:

So...  that was a bummer.  Next time I guess.  They were setting up for the concert tomorrow, that's why it was closed.  So we decided to walk around the surrounding parks.  

(L-R  Angelie, John, Lauren, Jenn, Kate, Me, Cassie)  

Nicole:  Doesn't Jenn look just like Jordan!?!  She doesn't act a thing like her, but holy crap.  

After passing a few red phone booths we finally caved and did the touristy thing...

Then I finally found something I've been looking for since I got here...  BEN!

And right next to Big Ben is Westminster Abbey, which is GORGEOUS!

I can't help myself, I'm too proud of the way I framed this next shot...

Then we stumbled on a castle.  With a MOAT!  (It was filled in with grass though.)  One thing about England, there's no shortage of castles.  They're like pubs, one on every corner.  

And then, something outrageous happened.  We went on this crazy long walk to find the tower bridge, and when we finally got there, we decided to take a picture from far away so we could actually get the bridge in the background.  That photo is below.

But while we were taking that picture, all of a sudden we heard a huge bang and saw an enormous red light reflected in a black tower in front of us.  Now, we'd been warned about terrorist attacks for weeks with the Jubilee and the Olympics going on.  There's been a lot of local anxiety.  So the first thing we all thought was "Oh my God, somebody just bombed the bridge."  Turns out it was a firework, but it scared the crap out of us for a second.  The picture below was taken somewhere between freaking out and laughing at ourselves.  

Here's the Tower Bridge, fully intact.  =)

In the end, we didn't see the Queen.  We reached the Thames an hour or two before the procession, but it was way too crowded to get close.  That's okay though.  We saw other old things.  Plus, the city was all decked out for the Jubilee and I feel like trudging around London in the rain, trying to track down the Queen is about the most English thing I could do at this point.