Today is the day!! We are so excited!! Woke up and got ready and double checked and tripled check we had everything. My mother had been so kind to put the flags out...quite literally! I thought she was bluffing!!

We caught the train to London from Twyford, and as British transport goes, it was delayed, and had fewer carriages than normal! We thoroughly enjoyed becoming the local's most hated people, travellers with big bags! It was such a pain as they had only supplied 3 coaches rather than 5 for a 9am train, so was a little bit cramped!!

We arrived at our hotel, the Marriott Renaissance St Pancreas Hotel. It was luxury! We checked in and were advised we had been upgraded from a queen to a king size. Score! We literally dumped the bags in the room and headed out.

We went to Harrods department store and got totally lost, I hate department stores so many levels and exits that I got disorientated. It is worse than festival place in Basingstoke!! We didn't quite look the part in Harrods! After we located the nearest exit we head down to Buckingham Palace to find the Queen! We didn't see her today or Charles! It was about lunchtime and Stu was practically passing out from hunger so we had to stop! We found a nice park opposite the palace and enjoyed eating our homemade sandwiches and watching the ducks. It was getting pretty chilling and starting to drizzle (wonderful British weather!!) we carried on walking to Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, my feet were already hurting at this point. One of my surprises for Stu was a trip on the London Eye, which my mother kindly spoilt for me Sunday afternoon!! It was a good trip up and back down again, Stu was checking out the MI5 and 6 buildings, so I am unsure what he is planning. I also saw, which I assume, is the headquarters of Shell. I took a picture for Kelli, as I knew she'll appreciate this more than I would!

Rather than take the tube as the Metropolitan line was under works we walked along the Thames from the London Eye to Tower Bridge, an impressive structure to. I had to explain to Stu what was so special, and he couldn't quite grasp how the bridge 'lifted' to let taller boats/ships through...I think he understood it in the end. Simple boy...!

We walked past Tower Hill and back on the tube. It was roughly 3:45pm and Stu was convinced that we wouldn't be able to go on the tube as we had off peak tickets and peak time was about to start. I explained how ridiculous and how that would never work, so Stu being himself asked one of the tube attendants, where he was proven wrong. 1-0 to me!

We went on the tube to Charing Cross and got off to see Trafalgar Square, pigeon free! Another short walk away we arrived at Piccadilly Circus. At this point I need to stop walking and sit down! I think I have managed to see most of London's must see sights in one day!

We went back to the hotel and decided to use the complimentary access to the spa and pool in the hotel! It was lovely! Not that I will be getting this treatment for a long time while travelling, but we enjoyed it!

For dinner we went to one of our favourites, Pizza Express. Yum, we had a bottle of wine to celebrate. Once we had finished I took Stu for the second surprise I had planned. Stu has kept mentioning that he wants to know what 'proper' cold feels like, so we went to the Ice Bar, which is created by the guys in Stockholm who build the famous Ice Hotel. Stu was convinced earlier in the day that I was taking him ice-skating so he was panicking and it was amusing to watch him mull over it all. He only twigged what we were doing when we queuing to get our cool jackets to get into the bar. With our ticket we got 40 minutes in the bar and a free cocktail in an ice glass. It was pretty chilly. We had a great time in the bar, and the 40 minutes flew past, which I was grateful for, as by the end I was pretty cold. I am glad I wore my woolly leggings under my jeans and my snowboarding jacket too!

One more tube journey and we were back at the hotel. I noticed our room looked a little different and realized that the staff had come into the room, made the bed ready and put out little slippers by the side of the bed. What service! We packed our bags up ready for the morning; I had an argument with my bag (the bottle of wine didn't help and stacked it while trying to stuff clothing back in). The morning wakeup call was 4am...this is part of the trip I was not going to enjoy!!