Sarah in London: First Attempt at Buckingham Palace

Biggest mistake so far: accidentally arriving at Buckingham Palace during the changing of the guards. My friends and I originally wanted to go to Buckingham Palace because it's a beautiful place to see and because Cate Middleton's royal wedding dress is on display in the galleries. Coincidentally just as we reached the palace at 11:00 am, the changing of the guards was about to happen, and there must have been thousands of tourists there. And they were all shoving each other and reaching up above their heads with cameras and iphones just to capture an image of those guys with the red uniforms and black fuzzy hats. It's cool, but it's not cool enough to push people out of your way for (yes, a woman actually pushed me out of her way as she ran towards the palace gates to follow the guards' path). Also, you can't even see the guards - you can only see mobs of tourists. All the pictures I have were taken thanks to the incredible amount of zooming my camera is capable of. Long story short, it was so crowded that all tour tickets for the morning were sold out and we didn't get to see The Dress. We'll be back next week...much later in the day than 11:00 am.
Once we got out of the mob of tourists we had a picnic in one of the nearby parks and then went off to orientation. The weather was gorgeous out, so after orientation some friends and I took a lovely stroll through Kensington Gardens. Plan for tomorrow: orientation and then the Tower of London!
xoxo,
Sarah
P.S. The one advantage of being trapped in the middle of thousands of tourists is hearing all the different languages being spoken...I never even noticed that until today when everywhere I turned there would be tourists from so many different countries.