Between the two of us, we took over 500+ pictures! I didn’t think that was possible, but I can be a little trigger happy, what can I say. Due to the high volume of pictures, I’m going to break this post down into parts – Part 1 is London, the first stop on our eight day action-packed, tourist adventure and Part 2 will be Paris.
Overall Take: It was great to see the sites and go to a country with so much history; however, we were slightly (and I use that term loosely) disappointed in how commercialized/Americanized this city-with-so-much-history was. You could not walk a block without seeing a chain restaurant that we have here in the States. Case and point - across the street from the Tower of London - England's oldest structure - we encountered the following:
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| Starbucks next to a Subway next to a Ben & Jerry's |
Here’s a picture montage of some of the sites:
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| G$ checking his watch in front of Big Ben |
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| St. James Park - All we could think was: Karo would loove to stalk the birds. |
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| Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace |
One of the coolest things (ok, maybe cool is not the best word) was that at ever intersection, they had painted "Look Right" or "Look Left" so you knew which way traffic was going to be coming from since they drive on the "wrong" side of the street over there:
It took us two days to finally get into the Tower of London due to timing. On the first, day we walk across the Thames, hit up Shakespeare’s Globe Theater (which oh by the way, is not the original, but was built as exact replica).
Then continued strolling down (or up?) the river banks to the London Bridge.
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| See London Bridge there in the back? |
But, by the time we got to the Tower of London, it was about an hour until closing and there was a long line to get in, so we opted to buy tickets for the next day and do it first thing in the morning before the place got too crowded. We then decided to walk back to our hotel on the other side of the Thames with a stop into St Paul's Cathedral.
Outside the cathedral steps were some Occupy protesters camped out with their tents:
The next day we woke up and attempted to take the Underground (also referred to as The Tube) back up to the Tower of London. However, the station closest to our hotel was closed for maintenance, so we followed the Thames River path up to the next one, only to find that it had been closed permanently. We. Could. Not. Catch. A. Break. Especially when it came to public transportation in London. So we decided just to continue walking up the Thames River Path. Right before we got to the Tower, there was this area right near the Thames that was completely underwater the day before when we left the tower. And by underwater, I mean, we had to climb on the blue fence since the water was complete covering the path. However, that morning, the tide had brought the water down no joke about 15 feet. See, we were unable to walk where those people were walking:
We got the Tower of London, followed a tour by a Yeoman Wanderer, also referred to as a Beefeater, who provided a lot of the history of the tower and some fun, sometimes creepy, stories about the folks who came there to be imprisoned or killed.
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| One of the towers inside the Tower |
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| View from outside the Tower. The grass used to be the moat. |
The stars did not align to let us go into Westminster Abbey. The first day we were in that area, the Abbey was already closed. After actually seeing the Tower, we had plans to get back down to the Abbey, which we were expecting to be open until at least 3:00 or 4:00, so we rushed to get there. Since the Underground station near the Tower of London was also closed for maintenance, we hopped on a bus (no unfortunately, the only time we took a bus during our stay, it was not a double-decker bus. What a shame, I know…), and then sprinted from the bus stop across a bridge to get the Abbey, only to find out that it closed at 2:00 that day. Wah waaaaahhhh. It just wasn’t meant to be. Maybe a blessing in disguise since tickets were about $18 pounds person. Kind of outrageous for a church. But...we did get some pictures of the outside:
We did make a visit to Harrods, the department store situated on a 5-acre site with over one million square feet of selling space in over 330 departments, just to see what it’s all about. We mainly stayed on the first floor and were in awe by the prepared foods section, which put Wegmans to shame! We got a few snacks and went back the hotel to eat and relax a little before dinner that night.
One of the very cool things that we learned in a taxi back from Harrods is that being a taxi driver in London is a super prestigious, life-long occupation that can take more than a year to prepare for (i.e. pass the required tests). Apparently they make you learn and memorize hundreds of routes throughout the city (keep in mind this is an old city, with confusing roads, so we’re not talking about DC’s perfectly constructed grid system). It took our taxi driver 2+ years to pass the test and he said that whenever you see guys driving around on scooters with maps clipped to the front, they are learning the routes or what he referred to as "gaining the knowledge."
On our last night there, we had tickets to go up into the London Eye. We had heard from our driver from the airport that going at night was the best way to see London. I guess it’s one of those things you have to do, but wasn’t all that spectacular. The coolest thing was more how the eye worked. Yes, I just said that and plan to geek out… Ok, guess I’ll spare you, but I thought it was very cool how it never stops (unless it absolutely has to). It moves so slowly, that they are able to unload a 20 person car, and reload it all at the base of the wheel. Pretty cool.
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| View of Big Ben and Parliament from the Eye. |
<3
K$
