Saturday 14th May
The preliminaries are almost over. Tomorrow the tour proper starts, and it is an EARLY start. Bags need to be outside the door by 4:30am, cold breakfast at 5:00 am.
The day started with another tube ride to Westminster, then a chilly walk to the bus stop for circuit on the City Tour bus, and I will tell you for free, an even chillier ride on the open top deck of the bus. Well at least for one of us, the other shirked it inside the enclosed lower deck. The tours are great because they have an audio commentary that fills in many details and history of the sites, and also gives access to wide area of London (and believe me after we covered a fair bit on Shank’s pony today) saves your legs no end.
We crossed the famous Tower Bridge:
London is full of old, new and innovative architecture (some interesting pics at the bottom of this)
After the tour we started hoofing it to Regent St, commencing at Piccadilly Circus. It is a street full of beautiful old buildings and very up-market shops. Picture a window display full of Rolex watches as a simple example. Thronging with people and with wide footpaths on both sides.
After spending all our money, with grieving hearts we left the shopping behind, and headed for St Pauls. Along the way we met Yoda and a very underfed horse in Trafalgar Square.
We also met the black sheep of the family:
Finally, feet aching, we reached St Paul’s Cathedral, knowing full well we were only part way through the trek.
St Pauls is a strong symbol to London, surviving the Blitz, not undamaged, but not destroyed by a bomb that failed to detonate. The green dome is an easily identified land mark. It also has statue of Queen Vic in its approaches.
Rolling down hill (fortunately) to the Thames is a far more modern structure – The Millennium Bridge. This is a futuristic pedestrian bridge, the first such to span the Thames. When it opened people swarmed to see it. It closed two days later! It wobbled and swayed and hummed. Took the engineers another two years to fix it. (Some great quality control there!)
After that we trundled along the banks of the Thames, back to Whitehall. (Hobbled would be a better description of my progress)
Final stop was Downing Street. Not sure if the boys in blue were to keep the reiff-raff out, or the inmates in.
The architecture we saw in passing.
The Pickle:
The rain guage (not sure how else to describe it, or what it is really for):
Built in wind turbines
