London, England - Parliament Square

For this post is going to be separating this city into several parts considering how large it is. I had stayed with a family friend so I had saved a bit of money doing that. I loved how easy it was to travel around the city by using the metro and bus system. My friend let me borrow her 'Oyster' Card which allowed me to put money on the card and use it for the metro and buses without having to take out the cash. It is cheaper to either buy a pass or get an Oyster card.

Although my first day in London I wanted to be a tourist so I opted to use one of the tour buses. The one I used was the 'Original Tour' company, the reason I chose this company was because I found the other buses employees to be extremely rude. Most of the companies were around the same price, I paid 25 pounds to use this service and it was for a 24 hour ticket. I bought my ticket pretty late ( around 1pm), so that meant I could use it for a good amount of the next day. Yippee!

The Marble Arch, a location where the tour bus drops and picks up at.  The arch is based off the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and was meant to be used as the ceremonial entrance into Buckingham Palace but was dismantled in 1851 and put in it's current location in front of Hyde Park.

Parliament Square

Around a square of greenery and statues of notable figures are Westminster Abbey to the South, Houses of Parliament to the East, Whitehall to the North and The Supreme Court to the West. I only visited the first 2 mentioned because of the massive heatwave passing through Europe and the large amount of tourists who were in the area.

Houses of Parliament

A statue commemorating King Richard I aka The Lion heart.

Big Ben! - The tower is named Elizabeth's Tower after Queen Elizabeth but the bell that is housed inside the tower is called Big Ben.

Westminster Abbey - built in the 10th century.

•  It is the final resting place for most of England's monarchy
•  has been used for the coronations of  English and British monarchs since 1066
• Also is used for weddings. The most recent wedding being between the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in 2011.

St. Margaret's Church - consecrated in 1523, it is still used as a parish church today and is gorgeous. To preserve the sanctity there are no pictures inside.

The Jewel Tower - One of the only two surviving portions to the medieval royal palace. Originally built in 1365-66 to house the treasures of King Edward III. It was detached from the main palace which is why it survived the fire in 1834 that destroyed much of the palace.