First day in town:

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Originally uploaded by woden325.

After the ghastly travel day yesterday, it was decided that today should be a free day, and also an orientation day for those
in the group that had never visited London before. After getting our travelcards and making sure everyone was flush with cash,
we took the tube to Kings Cross station. There's a significant number of Harry Potter geeks in the class, myself
included, so we went to see Platform 9¾. It's a brick archway with a luggage trolley protruding out of the wall. Clever and a
bit silly, which strikes me as the best way to do this.

Afterwards, we proceeded to Trafalgar Square, which was something of a disappointment. Nelson's Column is being cleaned or
renovated or somesuch, and the column is covered with scaffolding. They added insult to injury by wrapping the scaffolding
with goofy pictures of it underwater being menaced by giant car-eating squid.

Next, we walked along Whitehall, stopping at the Horse Guards Parade so people could take pictures next to the horses, then
down past 10 Downing Street, and finally to Parliament Square.

There, the group split up, the larger portion going in to Westminster Abbey, while four of us headed for the Imperial War Museum. We stopped at a nice little pub called The Three Stags for lunch. My chicken sandwich and a pint of "Old Speckled Hen" went down a treat. The Museum had some fine displays and I quite enjoyed it.
More pictures are up at my Flickr account.
Later tonight: The Ceremony of the Keys at The Tower of London.