Narrowing down what we wanted to do in London was ridiculous. Utterly so. Thankfully, Brad found the London Pass which gave us discounts on many of the places and attractions we wanted to see/do (including Westminster Abbey and the Churchill War Rooms), so that helped us narrow down our plans (not everything you might want to do in London partners with London Pass). And plans we had.
But first: breakfast. We stayed at a lovely little hotel (seriously around the block from the British Museum. See: London, Part 3) with the best continental breakfast. They had a fantastic spread and really good tea and coffee to get our day started.
I clearly had not had quite enough caffeine in this picture.
One of the things you can do with a London Pass is utilize one of a few different hop-on/hop-off bus companies, which we decided to do along our route. On the way, we passed this little nod to my roots:
While waiting on our first bus, I noticed that the guy standing next to me had an App State patch on his backpack, so we struck up a conversation with him and his family, confirming that they, too, were visiting from North Carolina. Small world! (It also helps that there is a direct flight from RDU to Heathrow...)
Trafalgar
We had gorgeous weather for our day out-and-about. Not a drop of rain! Plenty of sun! It was great.
I worked hard to get a picture of St. Paul's from the top of the bus, and it was really rather difficult- it's just enormous.
We knew we were coming back later in the day, so I wasn't too worried about getting a picture.
A distant view of London Bridge!
We decided not to tour the Tower of London (on this trip!), but we did get a nice, good view of it.
Our first stop of the day was The Shard (which I'd never heard of before, but Brad wanted us to do)
How great is this shot? London Bridge + a double-decker bus.
We got to the Shard (which is the tallest building in London and has an observation deck) almost as soon as it opened, which was a good call, as the lines were getting LONG when we were leaving. Because we got there right as it opened, we didn't have to wait at all.
I took this shot because, within the "frame" is the dome of St. Paul's. It's minuscule. Which is ironic, given my trouble getting a picture of it earlier because it was too big.
London Bridge
Awkward shot from the bathroom...
We left the Shard and walked over to the Globe Theater, which was something we were both really excited about. My degree is in Literature, so I think it's required that I love Shakespeare. Brad, in preparation for our trip, dabbled in a few of the histories over the summer and was really looking forward to seeing the Globe, too.
I loved this "Take Courage" building we passed on our walk.
And these!
We passed the site of the original Globe on our route.
One of the entrances to the new Globe.
We did one of the official tours and really enjoyed our guide, Jeremy.
All of the tour guides write their own tour "scripts," so each tour will be a bit different: different jokes and poignant comments and character. We thoroughly enjoyed ours.
It was about at this point that Jeremy made a not-too-obscure Shakespearean quote/reference (can't remember which at the moment), and I was the only one who laughed at it. At least Jeremy appreciated that I appreciated it.
The zodiac
We didn't get tickets for a show this visit (maybe next time), but they were running The Merry Wives of Windsor, and I'm sorry we couldn't carve out time for it.
Another shot of St. Paul's from outside the Globe
We took another suggestion from Lauren's blog and meandered through the Borough Market to find lunch. It's a VERY popular spot, so we made our way to an "outskirts" little shop and got a pizza to split, which was quite good.
You can spot the top of the Shard behind this sign for the Borough Market.
From our seat in the Market while we ate
We hopped back on the bus after lunch and saw a few more sites on our way to Buckingham Palace.
Lambeth Palace: the official London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury
The weather was SO BEAUTIFUL.
God save the Queen
He's a great sport, guys.
It was frustrating not to be able to get a clear shot of the palace, but alas. Can't win 'em all.
After Buckingham Palace, we walked to a near-ish-by pub to have an afternoon sticky toffee pudding (and coffee for Brad). I've wanted a genuine sticky toffee pudding for years (this is what happens when you read gobs of stories set in England), so this was an obvious afternoon activity.
There were such beautiful flowers.
We were so intrigued by this church and wished we could have visited.
Yep. I took another one.
We had our sticky toffee pudding at The Queen's Arms and THOROUGHLY enjoyed our overdose of sugar.
These lasted about 3 minutes.
After dessert, we hopped back on a tour bus to begin making our way to St. Paul's for a tour and evensong. Note: we also walked to a distant-ish bus stop because we NEEDED to walk off some of that pudding.
More Trafalgar
St. Paul's with that beautiful sky as a backdrop.
Brad and Erin Boswell LOVE to tour a grand and historic church.
We had originally planned to come back to St. Paul's on Sunday morning for service, but when we realized that evensong was scheduled around the time that we were going to be there on Saturday evening, we reworked our plans. Speaking of reworking our plans, when we got into the church to begin our tour, the lady that checked us in (again, we used our London Pass) mentioned that if we wanted to climb to the top, we needed to do that first before they closed that part of the church for the day. We hadn't even thought about climbing, but we never say no to those experiences (see: our trip to Denmark), so we immediately headed over to make our way up.
Some scenes from the beginning of the climb. I stopped taking pictures at some point, due to tight quarters and the need to focus on climbing in steep conditions.
The view partway up.
Waiting our turn to climb up the last bit. It's very narrow, so fewer people can climb at a time.
At the top! There's the Shard.
And back down...
We did the self-guided tour once we climbed back down and then stayed for evensong, which was beautiful but left something to be desired, as far as communal worship goes. After St. Paul's, we were pretty ready to grab some supper and head back to the hotel to rest our feet and get some sleep. It was a glorious day! I couldn't have envisioned a better day of touring. Up next: rain, the Rosetta Stone, and afternoon tea.
No comments:
Post a Comment