If April Showers Bring May Flowers....

...then come May I don't know WHAT London is going to do with all the flowers it's bound to have from all the rain we've had for the last several days.
That's not to say the sun hasn't shown up for parts of the day but this picture here shows just one storm that has blown through here today! Anyways, I guess since I need to be forced indoors to focus on my school work it's not all bad to have this weather around and the sound of the rain is quite soothing. So all in all it's not bad for anything except my mood.
Yesterday, however, I was lucky enough to go on a tour of the Palace of Westminster.  The Palada is most commonly called Parliament around here and I was actually unaware of the fact that it was considered a palace and used to be used as a palace, until booking this tour! It was obviously a very historical tour so I was enthralled for all 75 of the very quickly spoken, nearly running to keep up with the guide, minutes of it! With the State Opening of Parliament coming up on May 9th we were walked the route that the Queen will be walking when she comes to give her speech. No, it is not written by her and it is apparently only 10-20 minutes long now (I'm sure much to the relief of most people in attendance) and it's not even guaranteed she'll know what she's saying but HEY! she is the QUEEN! Anyways. We walked through both the House of Commons and House of Lords though we were not allowed to sit down on the seats. That is a privilege you must earn and I'm glad that even the children respected that. I so badly we had been allowed to take pictures but...alas, respect for the age of the building and security and all that.
Did you know that for (insert long time period here) years no royalty has crossed the bar into the house of commons from the house of lords because that is a sacred space for "the people" and when the Queen wishes to speak with the Commons she must send someone to knock on the door (which is previously slammed in his face as he approaches) and say something along the lines of "The Queen demands your attendance..." I feel like she should ask more politely instead of demanding but hey, tradition is tradition and if something's been done for hundreds of years...well you don't mess with it.
There are so many more interesting facts that of course I just can't remember off the top of my head to share with you...darn I should have snuck in a recorder! Ah oh well.

Included in my tour I was also allowed to go see the Jewel Tower which was/is part of the palace though no longer connected to the palace building. There is not much to see but it used to be quite a big deal! It was where stones were weighed and measured and money was kept and it is one of the last remaining parts of the ORIGINAL palace built like a million years ago or sometime in that time frame.
These scales here were actual scales used in the tower when it was still in use. The tower was actually still used until around 1941 (whoa! how did I remember that?!) when it was finally deemed too small for the needs and purposes it was designed for. I can't tell you where everything was moved to now, probably somewhere inside the palace or somewhere important nearby.
On an exciting note as well I got a haircut yesterday! Now I haven't trusted someone to cut my bangs (fringe as they insist on calling it here...what am I a table cloth?!) but it was time as they had finally grown past my chin and were more like a silly looking layer than bangs. So I went to a place near one of the Starbucks I was doing work at the other day and the nice lady who cut my hair was very patient and understanding of the fact that I wanted to keep all the length on my hair and that she had to be VERY careful not to mess up my bangs. I left feeling VERY happy with how it turned out and for the first time in several hair cutting experiences I haven't left crying. I suppose that's the difference when you pay for a decent hair cut as opposed to walking in to a chop shop ;)

Love from London,
Kristin