Look kids...Big Ben, Parliament and Buckingham Palace

Sept 7th -- Today was planned to spend seeing some of the final sights in London, including Buckingham Palace. But first, I had to find a computer repair store. It was a little difficult since we couldn't get on-line to look one up. So I headed to the train station near our apartment in hopes there would be one nearby. I found a Starbucks and decided to head inside to see if they could provide a recommendation (plus, I needed a Starbucks). They weren't sure where one was so after walking around and asking various people for almost an hour, I was finally pointed to a store that was basically a 100 meters from where I initially started. I entered the store and gave my best sob story (with most of it being true) to see if there was anyway that I could get them to fix my computer within 2 days before we left for China. The guy at the store was very nice and understanding, but wasn't sure if anything could be done if they didn't have the parts necessary. He was pretty sure it was something with the internal electronics. I left not having a good feeling that we would have a computer anytime soon. When I got back to the apartment, we took off for our sightseeing. Well, we first had to make a trip back to the mall. We had bought an umbrella at a travel store because we thought it was a good, compact umbrella. When we got home and opened it up, it was no better than the one's you can buy from the street vendors. So after returning it, we had lunch at a little Italian restaurant near the mall. They were advertising free lunches for kids...just our kinda place. We then headed to Buckingham Palace. We had pre-ordered tickets to see the state rooms of the Palace, which are only open during August and September, when the Queen is away. It was a good tour and included a special exhibit celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Commonwealth. After the tour, we stopped at the afternoon cafe for tea and a scone. Surprisingly, this was our first afternoon tea since arriving in London and it did not disappoint. Abby actually got the scone as her dessert (which included the clotted cream, strawberry jam and fresh strawberries), but I think Amy and I ended up eating most of it because it was so good. After leaving Buckingham Palace, we took the bus over to see Big Ben and Parliament. We actually thought we would be able to enter Parliament, but it was already closed for the day by the time we got there. So we walked up the street to see 10 Downing Street, the home of the Prime Minister. We then headed back towards Parliament and across the Westminster Bridge to the other side of the Thames. We had dinner planned again with Angel and Karim at Canteen. We had a little time to kill, so we found a playground near the London Eye where the kids were able to play. Around 6:30 we headed over to the restaurant for dinner. Canteen was a restaurant that had traditional British food. Amy had fish and chips and I had pie. It was very good and again a great meal with Angel and Karim. Angel was even so nice to bring Abby a birthday present. It was a little purse/bag and color set. It couldn't have been a more perfect gift for Abby.