Brenda and Tig, have you no faith in me??

Can you imagine me in London and not going to Harrods???

It's a beautiful store, full of haute couture, but also with some reasonably-priced-no-specific-designer clothes. I treated myself to a Stella McCartney

love

handbag similar to this one:
Woven silk ethnic--styled scarves are very big now there, with both men and women wearing them. So gorgeous. I almost bought one, but it came down to either the handbag or the scarf, since they were both around 300 pounds, which is
a lot, and I just couldn't afford both with a clear conscience.
Rus, here's some advice. Don't take your American Express card. There are hardly any places in England that accept that card, which caused me a lot of grief. Also, you probably know this already, but to convert pounds to dollars, take the pounds, half it, and then add the original number to get dollars. So 300 pounds would be 150 plus 300=450 US dollars.
The Tower of London was awesome. It's beyond my imagination to be walking around in the place where King Henry VIII had Anne Boleyn beheaded so so long ago. That's also where they keep the crown jewels, and it's the most heavily guarded place in all of the UK. Imagine seeing the crowns and sceptors used by not only Queen Elizabeth II but the previous kings and queens hundreds of years before her.
London Bridge is right there, and on the other side of the Thames River is Windsor Castle where the queen lives, and also Big Ben and the London Eye. It's a 20 minute walk to get to that area from the Tower of London.
Windsor Castle from the other side of the Thames.
The London Eye and Big Ben from the Tower of London.
The church where Princess Diana got married, St. Paul's (?).
Me with jet lag.
You have to pay for the public toilets, 30 pence which is 45 cents.
My niece Valerie.
The toilets are self-cleaning...after you leave and close the door, multiple water jets wash the whole inside down.
I have to upload more photos to show you the beautiful countryside. Rus, be careful driving, I'm not kidding. They have these things called roundabouts where you have to know what you're doing to keep the traffic flowing without getting into an accident. Google it and see, so you'll be prepared. It can be very confusing to figure out who has the right of way.
72 miles from London is Bury St. Edmunds, a lovely village with open markets and medieval architecture that people still live in. I didn't get to a pub, but they're everywhere. The fish in the fish & chips has the skin on it, not like here. There's also St. Edmund's Abbey, which is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Acres and acres of gardens and ruins and history and tranquility that I can hardly describe.
I learned that trucks are lorries, that "bloody" is a very bad curseword even though it's used so frequently by people, and that soft-serve ice cream cones are called whippies.
I need to post this before I lose it...I'm in my car and keep losing the internet signal. I'll post more in a few minutes.