Arriving in London and Exploring (Day 2, Part 1 of 2)

Travel tip:  Pack a notebook and pen!  For a trip as long as ours, having a notebook to jot down what we saw and did at the end of each day was so helpful.  I also wrote down the names of any tour guides we had.  It's been three weeks since the beginning of our trip and there is no way I could keep any of those memories straight without my notebook.  This takes up very little space and only a few minutes at the end of the day.

 

Our flight left LAX at 5:10 pm on Wednesday and arrived in London at 11:45 am on Thursday.  We were both able to sleep some.  United Airlines gave us two meals, plus a snack, and plenty to drink.  Customs and baggage claim in London Heathrow were a breeze and we were on our way to a black cab in no time.  Unfortunately our room wasn't available when we arrived (check in was at 3:00, we got there at 2:00.)  We decided to grab a bite to eat.

My adorable, but very tired, travel partner:

We checked in to the Mornington Hotel.  They did not have a lift (elevator) but we were told our room was only on the second floor.  This meant four flights of stairs!  Our room was nice and clean but TINY!  Or I should have typed tiny!  It was so small we couldn't open both our suitcases at the same time!  We didn't take any pictures of the hotel, but I snagged these from the hotel website:

 

 

We really wanted a nap, but kept moving since we had a River Cruise to get to.  I had looked at tickets for the London Eye, but they seemed a little overpriced.  While I was trying to make a decision, an ad popped up to add the River Cruise to the London Eye tickets.  The additional cost was so minimal that it was a no brainer.  Our walk from the hotel to the London Eye where we would take the river cruise was about 1.5 miles so we had to get going.  In that short distance we walked past Westminster Abbey:

 

And caught our first glimpse of Big Ben:

We found the proper queue (AKA line) for the river cruise and were on our way.

This was a very relaxing way to see many of the sights along the River Thames.  Our guide was knowledgeable and had a great style of not talking too much but providing lots of info.

Full disclosure:  I'm not a "royal watcher."  I've never been interested in royal families and hadn't really given much thought to visiting London.  Les had been there once on a business trip, but we had very little planned and no expectations.  London turned out to be a pleasant surprise! 

We saw the Palace of Westminster, which houses the UK Parliament:

Cleopatra's Needle - this is one of a pair, the other is in New York City:

 

St. Paul's Cathedral - construction began in 1675 and it opened in 1710.  It is on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London.  Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604.

 

It was hit by two bombs during World War II.  It has a protected view - high-rise development is restricted at certain sites if it would obstruct the Cathedral.

We cruised under the Blackfriars Bridge:

 

These pillars were from the Alexandria Bridge that had to be replaced with a larger bridge.  They formed part of the original railway bridge, built across the Thames in 1864.  In 1985, the old bridge was declared too weak to support modern trains, and was removed — but the supports were left. By leaving them in place, the pillars of the old bridge worked to protect the columns of the Blackfriars Railway Bridge from erosion.

 

 

Up next was the Millennium Bridge, a footbridge for pedestrians.  Construction began in 1998, and it initially opened on June 10, 2000:

 

 

We cruised under the London Bridge.  Which is not falling down!

We then started seeing more of the modern buildings of London.  Like the giant Walkie-Talkie:

The Tummy:

The Shard:

We continued on until we went under the Tower Bridge:

The Tower of London is in this castle:

The White Tower, which gives the entire castle its name, was built by William the Conqueror in 1078. The castle was also used as a prison from 1100 until 1952.

 

 

 

On our return trip we saw the Entry to the Traitors' Gate, through which many prisoners entered the Tower of London:

London Bridge Hospital:

Butler's Wharf, completed in 1873:

And Shakespeare's Globe.  The original theater was built in 1599, destroyed by a fire in 1613, rebuilt in 1614, and then demolished in 1644. The modern Globe Theater is an approximation based on available evidence of the 1599 and 1614 buildings. It is considered quite realistic, though modern safety requirements mean that it accommodates only 1,400 spectators compared to the original theater's 3,000.

Our day still wasn't finished, but I think this post is long enough!