On Wednesday, after the Changing of the Horse Guard, we took a purposeful walk.  I wanted to see Big Ben from Westminster Bridge.  The iconic view.

It was a little crazy, and was the first time here that I thought – this is the perfect place to be pick-pocketed.  I even paused at one point and realized my phone wasn’t in the front pocket of my purse, and I thought it had been snatched.  But thankfully, after rooting around, I did find it in the big black-hole section of my purse, where it was much safer than that front pocket anyway.

So we snapped pictures as we passed Big Ben in a mob of people.  We snapped pictures as we went weaving our way through people crossing Westminster Bridge, dodging the guys trying to entice us to guess (for a price) under which cup the ball was hiding.  This was particularly exciting when Lydia saw one guy who was doing this, use the cup to slip the ball up his sleeve.  She was quite proud of herself, and I felt it was a valuable lesson learned.

I even made the girls stop and pose with Big Ben in the background, then Scott and I posed while KatieRose took a picture of us.  I would have felt bad about holding up the mass of people crossing the bridge, if everyone and their mother hadn’t been doing the same thing.

Halfway over the bridge also afforded a great view of the Thames with the London Eye.

We then allowed ourselves to be herded to the other side of the bridge, pulled out our maps, and made our way to the Waterloo Station.