Leaving London - Jubilee, Harry Potter, and Beatles edition

 While we were in London the first time, the Jubilee was fast approaching and there were UK flags and colors everywhere!!! It made it even more fun to walk through the city with all the English pride flying on buildings and streets.

London is also a city with some great art.  Some of it is kept inside museums, some of it is performed in theaters, and some of it is right on the wall as you walk down the street.  The street artist Bansky is from England so we walked around and found some of his works on the London streets and stopped for a photo (which is actually pretty un-Bansky of us but hey, we do what we want!)

London is definitely a city filled with landmarks, from it's world famous Tube (parts of which were actually the first underground railway ever built) to the London Eye, and even the non famous buildings and bridges are a wonder to look at!  Just walking through the streets of London is a tourist attraction!

And you've gotta love the iconic bright red double-decker buses that are everywhere! We liked just riding around the city for a bit, the best seats are up top!

The London Eye with Westminster and Big Ben in the background.

Look! We even found the Croatian national embassy!

Cleopatra's Needle - An Egyptian obelisk near Embankment station, it's even guarded by sphinxes at the bottom.  You can still see where one was hit by shrapnel during WWI.

If these buildings look familiar that's probably because you've seen them in Harry Potter, as this is what King's Cross station looks like from the outside (well actually they're St. Pancras station - Kings Cross is connected but across the street and a slightly less impressive building - see below and to the right). 

But on the inside it's amazing!  They've recently renovated it with this cool white metal lattice framework that is lit up in purple.  It makes for a really great atmosphere inside.

But of course the main reason we came here was to visit platform 93/4!

It's in the main area of the station, so not actually between platforms 9 and 10 (I think they had too many tourists taking pictures to keep it there), but there is actually a sign and half a trolley cart disappearing into the wall.  We felt completely ridiculous walking up and taking pictures with everyone walking around trying to get on actual trains, but it was totally worth it!!  Gotta live in the moment!

Last but certainly not least, before we left London we had to go in search of some Beatles history!  We went to the building that (formerly :(... ) was the Apple studios building (above on the right) and found Paul McCartney's mailbox outside! And we also went to see the oh-so-famous Abbey Road.  We were total tourists and walked across about 100 times (ok not quite that many) to get some good pics but oh my goodness we had fun and I absolutely love these pics!