London day 5

Here you can see the Millennium Bridge, built 1999-2000.  Perhaps you remember hearing about it?  When it first opened so many people came to walk across it, it wobbled and people were hanging on for dear life.  It was closed and reinforced and is now a pedestrian bridge used by many people.  You can see St. Paul's  on the other side.
We crossed the bridge to get to Shakespeare's globe theatre.  It wasn't wobbly at all, but it did have really nice views of the river!
This is St. Paul's cathedral.  It was a little pricy to tour, and we wanted to get to the globe theatre, so we didn't go inside.

This is the reconstructed Globe Theatre.  Shakespeare's original theatre was built just a little down the river.

This is the stage ceiling.  The actual theatre has no roof, as there were no lights back in Shakespeare's time and all the plays were lit by the sun (this doesn't mean they were all matinees as the sun doesn't start going down until around 10:00 in the summer).  So, we had to find a spot out of the bright sun.  They passed out paper hats too, so the sun wasn't too bad in the eyes.
Alianna and I were groundlings for a show (As You Like It).  That means you stand on the ground by the stage to watch the show.  Tickets were only 5 pounds to stand and the show was really really good.  They do it the way it would have been done in Shakespeare's time, and that made it all really easy to understand. 
Alianna was exhausted after the play and fell asleep.  We took a bus to meet Mark, and happened to walk through Trafalgar square where they were celebrating Canada Day (Oh Canada was stuck in my head for a long time afterwards).  We got a Canada balloon and lots of people were wearing red and eating Canadian meats.

Alianna was still asleep when we saw one of the guards.  Poor guy; he's in everyones photos, and the only thing he can move are his eyes.  He kept looking over at people who were taking photos with him.

Continuing our walk to find Mark, we went through this gate which leads to a road going to Buckingham Palace.

We found Mark.  And Alianna woke up.  Here we are in front of Buckingham Palace.  Unfortunately they only do tours in the end of July and August.  But the gates were really nice!