These pock marks have been purposefully left int he base of the statue as a reminder of the bombing that London endured during WWII when the German Blitzkrieg made its way over the skies of London.

 30,000 people were killed during the war, and statues like these still bear the marks of the damage done to London at the time.


Ah the Duke of York Stairs, and the Duke of York Column. Unfortunately the only thing I can remember is this:

Oh, the Grand old Duke of York,
 He had ten thousand men,
He marched up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.

(I memorized that as Mike was singing it. I just looked up the rest of it. Here it is:

And when they were up they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
and when they were only halfway up,
they were neither up nor down.

A rhyme which only proves that the English are, in fact, completely crazy and don't make any sense.



So we kept walking, (remember I'm telling this from memory and googling occasionally) and we stop under this statue, which at first glance looks like a pegasus, but what we eventually realized was an angel standing in front of a regular horse. I was disappointed at this news.










But lo and behold! While we were waiting we came across this lone soldier standing on the street corner by his lonesome. One girl volunteered to go ask him what he was doing, then two more joined her, and then I came running after a few second after that. He was surprisingly nice. His answer was, "I'm waiting for my regiment." And he really was.

A few minutes later they were there! The Regiment was on its way to the Parade Grounds to relieve another regiment on duty there.


These are the Queen's Guard. Mike gave as some information about them. I was surprised to learn that they are actually soldiers serving a term of nine months before rotating back into active service.







The two regiments were staring one another down. The ones in Red, If my memory serves my well, are the Household Cavalry Regiment, there to relieve the Blues and Royals, the ones, fittingly, dressed in Blue.




Mike explained that historically, England has always maintained a fairly small military (only about 20,000 enlisted soldiers at any one time. "The Air Force no one really worries about because they're way up there," pointing vaguely to the sky, "And the Navy is always sailing off bombing something." Jokes aside these guys did look pretty impressive, especially once I realized they were actual trained soldiers.













These guys really are nice. A lot of them are in their teens. They're real soldiers. Say, Hi, Chani!


Mike absolutely hates this monument and I think I have to agree completely. It looks like a coatrack. What it is, is a monument to the women of WWII, symbolizing the many jobs that women undertook while their male counterparts were on the front lines. Some of the words I remember Mike using are, Awful, dreadful, ghastly, stupid, horrendous... the list went on. He also told us the key to an "A" in his class lies in a few sticks of dynamite--and then he stared at the back at the monument for a moment.

























We agreed with Mike that the railway was done with a surprising amount of taste. But it still didn't make up for the coatrack in the street.











Here we are observing the rare Silver-back Mike in his natural habitat. Notice the ease with which he handles the primitive tool of his species, the pipe. See the way he glances knowingly, confidently around him. He practically oozes self-assurance. Silver-backs, after all, fear nothing.


Yay, I managed to take a picture of myself!



Next, Mike walked us over to the Queen's Steps. When they were built, the Thames was much wider and came up to the actual steps so that walking down them would led to water. The Thames was also much more polluted. Falling in the heavily polluted water and swallowing any would usually mean death to the person.
Next we walked right up the Thames and, once again, saw the London Eye staring us down from its perch across the river. I love seeing that thing, I really do feel like London's watching me.





And finally we came and rested here at this site, where Churchill's famous quote reads, Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few, referring to the brave and daring pilots of the Royal Air Force in WWII who miraculously fought off the Luftwaffe and put an end to the German Blitzkrieg. This was a pivotal point during the war, a battle that ground the seemingly unstoppable Nazi tide to a halt, and showed the world that Hitler's advances could, in fact, be stopped.

Here we see Mike directing his steely gaze at one of our crew.