Phase 2 of our “Journey of a Lifetime” brought us to the city of London, England. We were here for a total of 36 hours! We bought a two-day pass with “City Tours,” which allowed us to do a Thames river cruise tour as well as a hop on hop off double-decker bus tour. Over the course of the two days in London, we walked more than 40,000 steps. We visited Buckingham Castle, Hyde Park, the Tower of London, went to mass at Westminster Cathedral, had fish and chips (twice), saw The London Eye, walked across Tower Bridge, drove over and floated London Bridge, found a geocache, and refreshed our feet in the Princess Diana Fountain. We found the city to be very clean and overall enjoyed an amazing few hours in London. We were impressed with how quiet the city was even given the vast number of people that live there from any number of different nations. Very much like New York, the voices are a cacophony of languages and accents.
While we took hundreds of photos, we are only posting about 45. There are detailed picture captions with each pic.
Now…we have just arrived at the University of Limerick in Ireland for an Up With People reunion!! We will be here until Sunday, then we set off to tour Ireland!
We are posting this in a bit of a rush, so please forgive any typos or grammatical errors!
On arrival in Southampton, we took a taxi from the port to the bus terminal. We took this national express coach from Southampton Civic Center to Victoria station in London.
This is Westminster Cathedral in the heart of West, London. The irony of this church is that it is absolutely enormous and beautiful yet in the shadows of the seat of the church of England, Buckingham Palace!
I realize that taking a photograph during mass is not respectful. However, I could not get over the number of people attending mass, easily over 1000 people!
We are always struck by cobblestone and brick paver roads. This road is in London. Imagine if it could tell stories!
We didn’t take a ton of these pictures because we kind of feel that it is disrespectful for people to be clamoring to take photos with the king guard. Moments after this photo was taken, he stomped his foot and walked away to speak to a guard on horseback.
This is a photo of the London Eye. It was erected in 2000 to mark the millennium. It was scheduled to stay up for two years as a celebration for the city of London. However, it makes so much money that it is still up and operating! It takes 60 minutes for one revolution and it said that the profits are in excess of $10,000 per hour. We did not ride on it because it moves super slow!
Sorry for the poor quality of this photo, but this is a replica of William Shakespeare’s Globe theater. We took this from the Thames riverboat cruise.
This is the Tower of London. Many a traitor to the Crown, lost their head and their life within this building. You can see in the lower left area of the photo where it says “Entry to the Traitors Gate.” this is also where the Crown Jewels of the monarchy are secured. If we ever return to London, we will definitely want to tour this site in detail.
This is Tower Bridge. We went under the bridge on the Thames river cruise. Then the next day we walked over the bridge.
We took the Thames River cruise from Westminster port all the way to Greenwich Village. Greenwich is where time is set for around the world. Because London is so close to Greenwich, the financial district of London is able to process trades both in the eastern and western hemispheres in the same day.
When Ken was teaching, he spent a lot of time on geography. He really enjoyed teaching the kids about different places around the world and providing information that could be important at some point. Here he is standing with his right foot in the eastern hemisphere and his left foot in the western hemisphere. He is standing over the Prime Meridian, which is an imaginary line that extends from the north pole to the south pole and passes directly through Greenwich, England.
We spent most of the first day in London on the River Thames cruise boat. By the time we were returning back to our Airbnb, the sun was setting. This is a photo of the Shard on the left, the pointy structure, and the tower bridge.
This is a photo of “Big Ben.” Though actually, it is the Clocktower for the House of Parliament in Westminster. “Big Ben” is actually the name of the largest of the five bells in the clock tower. An interesting fact about the square of the clock is that two double-decker buses stacked on top of each other could pass through top to bottom. There are all sorts of clocks spread throughout the city of London. We were surprised to see that all of them, without fail, told the correct time!
The “Royal Standard” flying proudly above Westminster.
Most of the phone boxes in London have been disabled. If you look closely you’ll see that the handset is missing.
“Hello…Dr Who?”
We bought a two-day pass for the “City Tours” tour bus and river tour. This was an absolute great value! We paid a total of £99 for both of us for both days! It’s a hop-on, hop-off system.
The King’s Guard.
Here we are standing in front of our friend Charlie’s house. He didn’t realize we were going to be visiting so he didn’t clear his calendar for us. We’re sure he feels badly. This is also the day (M,W,F & Su) for the changing of the guard. There were easily 100,000 people standing around the front of Buckingham Palace and down the Mall. We took our photographs and jumped on the bus and enjoyed a full morning and early afternoon of no crowds!
Like any large city, homelessness is a factor. Though there was very little homelessness scene throughout the city, this was a small encampment set up outside of Hyde Park. Just across from Mayfair (a ritzy road of homes).
All around the city of London, there are beautiful array of flowers. Baskets and boxes of colorful flowers, adorn many homes and businesses.
The front gates of Buckingham Palace.
This is in front of the Royal Mews. It is where the Royal cavalry are housed and trained.
A statue of the “British Bulldog”, Winston Churchill. You’ll notice there is no bird poop on the statue. It is rumored that there is a small amount of electricity flowing through the statue which keeps the birds from landing on him.
The House of Parliament, Westminster, as taken from the atop of the double-decker tour bus.
Many of the city of London’s double-decker buses are now electric!
Our goal was to try to walk around and in Saint Paul’s Cathedral in Westminster. However, they charge £20 to get in. I guess the Church of England isn’t as interested in people seeing its beauty as much as other faiths.
Of course, we had to go geocaching! Here is a photo of Chris finding a really nice cache.
The general vicinity of the geocache. It was somewhere behind this raised crypt.
Here we are in the middle of Tower Bridge. We walked across and floated under it!
A traditional British mailbox.
This is the Tower of London. The area where you see the path and the green-scape used to be filled with water as a moat that surrounded the building.
London is an incredibly bike friendly city. Every roadway seems to have a bike lane to the left or the regular vehicle lane. There are many different bike companies that rent bicycles by the hour.
This is a monument to Prince Albert. It is along the side of Hyde Park near Kensington Gardens.
If you have to use the bathroom bad enough, you will pay up! £.20 in order to use the loo!!
Inside Hyde Park, within Kensington Gardens, is a tribute to Princess Diana. It is called the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain. There’s not really much of a fountain as much as there is a stream that people can play in. When we saw all the children and adults, laughing and having fun, we couldn’t help but think that that’s what Princess Dianna would want!
This is Ken resting his dawgs in the “fountain” after two days of 20,000+ steps.
A bus angle photo of “Big Ben.”
We happened to be walking past a police station, but in all of our travels around the city there was very little presence of London police. The city is overall very clean and very safe.
This is one of the London Black cabs. We hired it to take us from the Airbnb to the subway station, which we would end up taking to Heathrow international airport. The blue door in the background is the entrance to our Airbnb. It consisted of a bedroom and a bathroom.
The taxi dropped us off at Green Park station. We took the subway from there to Heathrow airport.
Here’s your sign.
The London Subway.
Today, Tuesday August 6, we will have taken a taxi, a subway, an airplane, and two city busses before we reach our destination at the University of Limerick, in Limerick Ireland.
It brings us great pleasure to fly on an Aer Lingus aircraft. It always means that we are coming home to Ireland.
