Our final stop of our whirlwind tour was London. We took a train to Caen (which was only 10 euro for the two of us, less than I thought!), a taxi to the ferry terminal, and boarded the ferry for Portsmouth. I was expecting a ferry something along the lines of the Angel Island ferries in San Francisco, although obviously bigger. Definitely much nicer than that. There were lots of airline style seats (but bigger), tables, places to eat (at decent, although not great) prices, and very large areas to move around in. It had almost a cruise shipesque feel.
Looking towards the food area from our seats
the English Channel
Once in Portsmouth we took a bus over to the train station and got on a train to London. We arrived at the Waterloo station, bought our Oyster card and hopped on the tube to our hotel.
We stayed at the Hilton Green Park Hotel the first night, which was really nice with the normal comforts of a hotel. Except you had to pay a lot for internet (boo). We had dinner at a traditional pub, but decided just to go to bed early. I remember Stephen laughing away at some British t.v. show when I went to sleep, so I’m not sure how late he stayed up. But this was the day after my late night research as to the cheapest mode of travel to London (went to sleep around 2:30 that night), so I was very tired.
The next day we moved to a bed and breakfast called the Cartref House. The beds were comfortable, the bathroom was large for European standards, and breakfast was really good. Everyday we had a full English breakfast with eggs, tea or coffee, toast, canadian bacon, half a grilled tomato, and one other item (first day it was beans, second it was something else -can’t remember at the moment, and the last day (this morning) it was grilled mushrooms). The couple who owns the bed and breakfast are very nice, offering friendly advice for those who want it, but not overwhelming you.
The door to our bed and breakfast
It was raining the first day, but we set out for some walking tours of London. We used the Rick Steves audio guides and went up Whitehall past Westminster Cathedral, Parliament and Big Ben, the London Eye, past Downing Street (where the Prime Minister lives - Number 10 Downing Street), the Banqueting House, several memorials, and into Trafalgar Square.
Big Ben. Did you know that "big Ben" is actually the bell inside the clock tower? It was named after the man who oversaw the installation of the bell. But most people refer to the whole clock tower as "Big Ben"
Big Ben and parliament
The London Eye. It's 35 pounds each to go on it, which is around 50 U.S. dollars (each). So we decided not to actually go on it.
Statue of Boadicea, who was queen before "Londinium" was conquered by the Romans. She lead a brief revolt against the Romans, which was unsuccessful in the long run.
Downing Street (#10 Downing Street is where the prime minister lives. Hence the fence and guards). Nothing exciting happened while we passed by.
WWII memorial for the women who served. The uniforms are all empty to symbolize the sacrifice made by these women.
Banqueting House. The site of many royal functions through the years. More gruesomely, King Charles I was beheaded here.
Horse guard at the entrance to a street that leads to Buckingham Palace.
Lots of these phone booths around.
Column with Admiral Horatio Nelson who defeated Napoleon and saved Britain.
The center of London in Trafalgar Square.
London is hosting the Olympic Games next year - this countdown in Trafalgar Square
We went into the National Gallery and just hit some of the highlights. When we came out it had pretty much stopped raining, so we did the Rick Steves City Walk. After basically taking the Tube in a circle because of line closures (oops), we set off down the Strand.
We passed several churches by Christopher Wren, who basically rebuilt the area after it was mostly destroyed by the great fire in 1966. The good thing about the fire was that it basically cleansed the city after the Plague. Unfortunately it burned down almost all of the buildings.
Dr. Johnson’s House is the place where the man who wrote the first English dictionary lived. We were there on Sunday so it was closed, but here’s the outside. He and his assistants wrote the first dictionary in that house.
A statue of his cat, who ate oysters, was in the square. That's an oyster in front of him.
Ye Olde Cheshire Tavern was down a little narrow alleyway from Dr. Johnson’s house, and he frequented it regularly.
We went into St. Paul’s Cathedral right as it started to rain. This is another Christopher Wren church that has been the sight of many important weddings and funerals, including the wedding of Prince Charles to Princess Diana.
We decided to finish the City Walk another day so we had enough time to make it back to Westminster Abbey. There was a free organ recital at 5:45, which we took the bus back to. We lined up and were let inside (although some people ignored the line and walked right in) and sat down. There were no pictures or videos, and we listened to several organ songs played by an amazing organist. I can’t remember the names of the pieces he played, but they were very good.
The next day we headed to Leicester Square to start the Rick Steves West End Walk. Anyone else find it weird that Leicester is pronounced “Lee-ster”? We looked at the half priced tickets at the Tckt booth (for those going to London, there is an official Tckt booth freestanding in the middle of the square. All the other places that claim to be “official” half price ticket resellers are not. You can get good deals from them, but you have to be careful.) There weren’t any shows we really wanted to see so we decided not to go to one.
From Leicester Square we walked to Covent Garden. There we found our first Apple store in London. We sat down in there (well, I sat, Stephen browsed) for a while. It was nice to have free internet. :-)
The outside of the apple store (see the little apple sign hanging above and just to the right of the guy in the white shirt?)
We watched a street performer who was very good - quite humorous and then he laid on bed of nails, had another bed of nails put on top of him, and then had a big guy stand on top of the second bed. He had little drops of blood on him, so he’s either a great magician or a great street performer. Either way it was entertaining.
We walked into Neal’s Yard, which is a little square with a lot of vegetarian restaurants and "natural" remedies. We have nothing against it, but it was a little too hippyish and new agey (I think I just made up those words, but they fit). It was a cute very brightly colored alley, though.
We spent some time in Foyle's Books, partly to rest our feet, partly because bookstores are always interesting. And for the first time in 3 weeks, we could actually read the books that were in the book stores. (They were in English, everywhere else had been Italian, German, or French).
Across from Foyle's Books we walked down Denmark Street. It looked like nothing special, but it has seen the beginning of many great musicians. The tour talked about in that building was a recording studio that recorded the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and the Who, and that building was where Elton John (at the time Reginald Dwight) worked and he wrote "Your Song" on the roof one night. Pretty interesting.
We kept walking through Soho Square and around Soho. Some very seedy shops and risque signs right next to business suit clad cafes and shops. Weird.
From Soho we head through Carnaby Street (famous for its shopping in the 60s, now mostly upscale shops) to Regent Street. We were getting pretty hungry at this point, but I really wanted to have afternoon tea. I had read that many department stores have cafes that do an afternoon tea, so we checked in the Liberty store, but no luck.
Then we headed down Regent Street. First stop was, of course, the Apple store on Regent Street. It definitely doesn't look like an Apple store, except for the Apple logo on the windows.
We walked down Regent Street, which felt very much like the Champ du Mars in Paris: lots of stores I am very unlikely to buy anything in. I cannot fathom paying $1,000 for a purse or $500 for a scarf. I don't care how much money I have someday. That is ridiculous. Although I suppose I just choose to spend money in other places, but $500 for a scarf??
We went down Regent Street to the very noisy Piccadilly Circus. Lots of people and cars and construction. We went into Lillywhites, a sports store with lots of football (aka soccer) jerseys to see if there was a decent price on a Manchester (Stephen's team) jersey. There were some okay prices, but they were all on XS or XXL jerseys. He bought a scarf that's now hanging in his cubicle, though.
We also went in to Cool Britannia, home of all the cheesy British souvenirs you could want. I looked around for something to buy, but nothing struck my fancy.
From here we headed up Piccadilly Street and went into Waterstone's, the flagship store for this company. Several stories of books. The very top has a nice cafe where we finally had our afternoon tea. Did you know that there are very specific words that mean types of tea and the sides that come with it? If you ask for cream tea, you get a pot of tea and a scone or two. If you ask for afternoon tea you get everything from the cream tea plus a tiered tray of finger sandwiches and pastries. Champagne tea is afternoon tea with a glass of champagne. And high tea is afternoon tea with something more substantial, like eggs or meat.
We had afternoon tea which had ham and mustard sandwiches and salmon sandwiches, two scones, and a piece of cheesecake. I drank the tea, Stephen drank a beer. We had a great view of London with Big Ben, the towers of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey in the distance.
After our tea we headed to 221b Baker Street, which is the address of Sherlock Holmes in the book series. There's a museum, but we just looked around the gift shop.
We hopped back on the Underground and headed for Abbey Road. There were a lot of people being completely indifferent about the fact that this really was a road that cars attempt to drive on. They would walk across the sidewalk and freeze so someone could take the picture....while cars pulled up and waited. All I can say is if I lived in the area, I would never drive past that intersection! It was pretty cool to see the exact place where the album cover photo was taken.
One of my favorite movies, if not my very favorite, is Notting Hill. We thought it would be neat to find something like "welcome to Notting Hill" or Notting Hill Books or some sign of that sort. Well we wandered around Notting Hill...and found nothing. It is a really cute part of town though. I could totally imagine Julia Roberts walking through it.
We finished our City Tour, this time starting at St. Paul's.
We walked down to the financial district (really important banks, not much to look at)
Then down to the Monument, which is the monument for the Great Fire of London in 1666, which took out most of medieval London.
Then we headed across the Thames on London Bridge. After singing the nursery rhyme I assumed London Bridge was at least somewhat impressive, like the bridge I always saw in the pictures of London. This one:
In reality, London Bridge is a very boring cement bridge that has a great view of Tower Bridge, which is the one in the picture above. The true London Bridge is somewhere in Arizona and Londoners like to joke that the person who bought London Bridge (which was unimpressive then as well) thought he was buying Tower Bridge. Anyway, here is Tower Bridge behind us (while we stood on London Bridge).
The next day was our museum day. We started at the Churchill War Museum. It's in the underground bunker that Churchill secretly ran the war from while London was being bombed in WWII. After the war they basically locked the door and left it as it was on the final day of the war. Eventually someone made it into a museum and you can now walk through each room with a great audio tour.
A sign that told everyone what the weather was like above ground. (Many went long periods of time without going outside)
A cross section of the ceiling. Had a bomb been dropped directly on the building which the bunker was under, it probably would have collapsed.
Churchill's bed
Then we headed for the Imperial War Museum. There is a lot of stuff in this museum, with a lot of information. I definitely recommend it if you are in to history at all. The holocaust section was very moving, but put us in a little bit of a funk for the afternoon.
the trenches exhibit, where you "feel" (and see and smell) what it was like to be in the trenches in WWI
We finished off the museums at the British Library, which has everything from ancient writings to a Gutenberg Bible to Beatles memorabilia.
Lastly, we walked through Green Park to Buckingham Palace. It seems almost strangely placed in the middle of a big city. One minute you're walking through a nice park and the next, you're in front of the palace. It's not that impressive by sight (especially after seeing Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau in Germany), but knowing how important it is to British royalty and how famous it is does make it worth seeing.
We walked back to our wonderful bed and breakfast and flew out the next morning. A whirlwind of a trip for sure. I am very glad we did everything that we did, even though it was very fast paced. I feel like I got a great feel for areas of Europe that I would like to go back to (like Florence) and places I feel like I have seen what I wanted for that location and don't necessarily want to go back (like Rome). When I told people about the trip we had planned, many warned that we wouldn't enjoy the places we were going, it was going to be too fast paced, we would be too tired, etc. While I appreciate their concern and can see how those things could be possible, we really didn't get overwhelmed or overly tired. Our stop in Switzerland rejuvenated us for the second half of our trip, so it feels like we had two trips instead of one. (Before Glarus and after Glarus). Stephen and I travel very well together. When one of us gets stressed, the other goes into calm mode and keeps everything together. I love to plan, so this trip kept me busy for a long time. I did a lot of research and read a lot so I knew exactly where to go and when to go before we stepped foot in the city. (even the places I wanted to eat in many cases). Rick Steves' books were invaluable to me, so I very much recommend them!
There are many places I'd like to see more of and some that we didn't really see at all. Here's hoping for another trip to Europe sooner rather than later!
