Crowds and crowds and more crowds

This morning we took the train out to Windsor Castle - we were absolutely packed shoulder to shoulder, standing room only on the way there.  Then the line to get in was huge but fortunately I had bought a London Pass and not only was the Castle free but we got to skip most of the line (we still had to go through the security part).  We toured the castle and watched the changing of the guards (which was crowded) then had a nice non-crowded ride back to London.  Then we took the subway (which was packed) to the British Museum (which is free and therefore also crowded).

Then we waited for one of the hop-on/hop-off buses but it never came so we decided to walk to Trafalgar Square (big mistake).  I knew it was Gay Pride Day and I had just assumed parades would be in the morning and things would have settled down by mid-afternoon.  But instead we ended up walking right into the middle of a huge crowd around Trafalgar Square and were essentially trapped there because we needed to continue going south and it just happened that the parade was coming and the sidewalks were all blocked by barricades.  We end up in an absolute crush of people - half of us trying to walk south and the other half trying to go north.  On top of that in that area there are no side roads, so we couldn't do anything else but push on through.  The parade caught up with us and passed us and eventually we came to the end of the barricades.

At this point we gave up on getting the hop-on/hop-off bus because it was probably stuck somewhere also.  So we took the subway out to see the Royal Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial then took the subway back home.  The subway was crowded in both directions so I think it's fair to say that I've had my fill of people for today!