Portraits and the Palace

Today, our class took a visit to the National Portrait Gallery, which is part of the National Gallery, but it is solely for the display of portraits of all the famous people of Britain, which is a lot. I probably could have spent a whole day just looking around. Our task was to pick a person who looked interesting, and we're giving oral presentations on that person next week. And they're all people who lived around the same time as Jane Austen. So public speaking. Yay! I will be giving mine on William Wilberforce, so I'm pretty psyched about that. I'm hoping to get my presentation filmed, so I can share it with you guys.
National Gallery:

After class, we made our way to Buckingham Palace. Pretty huge. Pretty awesome. Didn't see the Queen, though.

And the gardens around Buckingham Palace:

Unfortunately, the guards at the Palace were way back behind the gates, so there were no photo opportunities. But, being the determined Americans we are, we searched high and low until we found them outside St. James' Palace. Still not super close, but close enough. This is me awkwardly trying to point to the guard behind me, but since I don't have eyes in the back of my head, I ended up pointing at the bush. Typical.

When we returned from the Palace (gosh, that sounds super grand), we went grocery shopping at the Poundland, where everything is one pound. Pretty great. We also visited an awesome bookshop, in fact, the one that is featured in the movie Notting Hill. Literally just down the road from our flat.

And tomorrow, we go on our first ISA excursion to Brighton! But don't worry, I won't be running off with a member of the militia.

Also, I wanted to share a couple other photos from the past few days:
The Gang:

And this is specifically for my Doctor Who friends:

 Cheers!