WORLD TOUR BY SHIP, TRAIN, BUS, FERRY, FEET 2012: DAY 51 TUESDAY MAY 15 IF YOU GO TO LONDON..

I'll tell you what you should see. We followed Rachel's transport advice carefully and arrived at Charing Cross Station before 9 am. Wandered around Trafalgar Square and nearby streets and realised that most businesses do not open until 10 and close at 6. Our Big Bus tickets entitled us to a free "Royal Walking Tour" which sounded better to us that the others: Beatles, Harry Potter and Ghosts (more suited to our son David). We fell in behind the Union Jack held aloft by our young guide Samantha - a young lass from
Glasgow who set a cracking pace and kept us laughing. She reminded us of Evelyn and we both gave her 10 out of 10 for her performance. We watched the royal guard (who were Irish) go through their rituals at St James Palace which is the official royal residence, then followed them toward Buckingham Palace and took a short cut through the park to watch the new guard (Welsh) march up to swap places with them. We enjoyed watching the changing of the guard a lot more than we thought we would. Got back on the Big Bus to do the section we had not done yesterday, but found it took us over two hours to get back to Trafalgar Square because of traffic jams. It was wet and even colder as winds blew down from Scotland, so by the time we struggled into a cafe at 2.15 Malcolm was shivering uncontrollably. We were planning to go to St Martins Theatre but could not find it, but we did find a hairdresser and Lyn had a very good haircut, which filled in more time in a warm environment. While that was happening Malcolm stumbled on the theatre so we booked 7.30pm seats for the 60th anniversary performance of the Mousetrap. We enjoyed the play but had to take a vow not to reveal "whodunnit". During the afternoon we booked seats on the Eurostar train to get us to and from our bike tour. We had a very nice meal in a Japanese restaurant before the show.