This Is London

Again, for the historically disinclined, the title of this blog article is taken from Edward R. Murrow’s broadcasts from London during the Blitz of 1940. He always started off with “This is London.”

In our last full day in London we of course had to see everything we hadn’t seen before. This meant going to pretty much EVERYTHING in London in 1 day. 🙂 We started off taking the tube down to Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey and Parliment. Took some pictures there, decided not to bother going into Westminster Abbey since we’d already seen Salisbury Cathedral, and then we walked across the bridge in the cold wind to the Millenium Wheel, also known as the Eye of London. Endured the security check to ride it, which was as bad as getting on an airplane almost. Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, the Eye doesn’t stop turning while you get on. However it doesn’t move that fast and so it is very easy to just step into the enclosed compartment. Anyway, we rode that and took a LOT of pictures of London from up in the air. We saw Big Ben, Parliment, Westminster Abbey, from several hundred feet in the air. Had a great view of all of London including the new “gerkin” building, the Swiss Re Building, which sort of looks like a Faberge egg. Also could see what I think is the new arch for the new Wembley Stadium WAY off in the distance. See the pics, which still aren’t up, but will soon be. It takes a while to wade through 1GB of photos.

After that we hopped on the Tube again and went to the Tower of London. The Tower is one of the oldest castles in London, dating from at least the 1080s and being built with portions of the old Roman wall included. The Tower has the Crown Jewels, which are on display and quite impressive, as well as a ton of gruesome ghost stories, the Tower being the place where Ann Boleyn was executed at the order of Henry VIII, and various other people who had the misfortune of being too closely related to the Crown also met their deaths. The Beefeaters, or more correctly called the Yeoman Warders are also here. Originally established as the bodyguard of Henry VIII, they guard the Tower, the Crown Jewels and give tours. They are nicknamed the Beefeaters because they often had beef to eat as a perk of their job, while few others in London did. The Tower Bridge is also here, which I had incorrectly thought was London Bridge. It certainly is shown much more than the real London Bridge, which frankly is not as interesting. After that Christi had a glass blowing place she wanted to check out. It was on south side of the Thames, a few blocks from London Bridge Station in a more working class neighborhood. We stopped at The Cooperage Pub at London Bridge Station and I had some Davy’s Old Wallop. Great beer and a great pub! It used to be a slaughterhouse, so had a lot of strange decor. See the pics again.

After lunch there we wandered through small neighborhoods near London Bridge Station and eventually found the building the glass works was in, but it looked like they weren’t accepting visitors. That was annoying. After that we walked over to the Tate Modern Art Musuem, which was right next to the Globe, which we were just at! We did a LOT of walking, more than 10 miles. After that we took the tube back near Hyde Park and walked to Buckingham Palace. Watched the guards walk about and saw some mounted red coats ride through the square. Pretty cool. After that we trudged back to the hotel and tried to shove 5 days worth of stuff into our suitcases for our flight tomorrow to Inverness.