Wow. What a day. I'm an in London for the first time, and today was my one and only chance to do some site-seeing. If you haven't been able to tell from my Disney posts, I am a strong believer in vacationing hard, and although this trip is not a vacation, the hours from 9:30 AM to 9:30 PM were discretionary, so here is what we did.
I say we because I am traveling with Mike, my boss. He has been here before and was very nice to me all day, letting me pick the sites I wanted to see. The day actually started while I was over the Atlantic, but I will skip that part. I deplaned (the technical term) feeling like I had survived an ordeal, which was actual better than it could have been. There was no one in the seat next to me and even though I wasn't comfortable, I did get a decent amount of sleep (4+ hours?)
I grabbed a small booklet in the airport that said "Welcome to London" and it turned out to be a fantastic find. It had a basic sightseeing map and info about the tube (subway). Mike happened to run into someone on the plane who he had worked with before and that was our second great find. Mr. Bartholemew has been to London a lot lately and quickly led us through the airport, put us on the right train, and even helped us buy our tube passes (oyster pass is the real name, although I don't know why it is named that.) After these two big wins and a couple of extra minutes here and there as we learned how the tube system worked and we were checked into the hotel by 11:30 and ready to hit the streets.
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I had been given a thorough debriefing on London sightseeing by a friend at work before I left (a third boon, really) and I had already decided that I didn't want to spend money on a tour. We just rode the train to the Westminster stop and got off and started walking. I also decided to travel light, so I didn't take my borrowed travel guide with me. While it was nice to have an uncluttered experience, I do wish I had had a bit more of the background on some of the things we saw. Next time I think I will spend some quality time with a photocopier before I leave home, or even better, invest in a good pda.
Anyway, so the first thing we see upon exiting the underground is Big Ben. Oddly enough I don't think either of us were 100% sure it was Big Ben. It was certainly a very large, gothic-looking clock next to the river Thames, but for some reason I expected something bigger. It probably had a lot to do with how we just popped out of the ground right next to it. I took some pictures, and then we walked around and got a picture with some of the attached parliament houses as well. From our new position we decided that the large cathedral we were standing next to was Westminster Abbey. It being Sunday it was not open for tours, but we wandered around the grounds and visited the gift shop. It was cool just for the architecture if nothing else.
This seems like a good time for a rambling side note. FINALLY I found a practical purpose for my GE history classes. Every now and then some ridiculous piece of trivia from those classes that would come to mind. So let that be a lesson to everyone out there. If you are ever sitting in a boring history class just remember that someday you might visit the place concerned and knowing the history will make your vacation better. There you go. A noble purpose. Now on with the report . . .
We then went looking for Buckingham palace, and after a minor detour we found it: big, square and plain. Kind of disappointing really. It had really fancy gates, but other than that it looked like an oversized bank. There weren't any guards with the red coats and fluffy hats either. Instead there were funny guys in blue coats. Every couple of minutes they would do a funny high legged walk for 20 feet, turn around and go back to where they started. Since I don't think they were allowed to actually turn their heads to look around I can't imaging they are very good at guarding anything.
After that we walked from the palace down to Trafalgar square. I hear it has some nice fountains, etc, but I wouldn't know because today London decided to celebrate the chinese New Year on the square. It was packed with people, and I found it ironic that We Europeans (or Westerners, if you are offended by that generalization) like to celebrate other people's holidays with our own customs. For instance, when we walked up there was a cute Chinese girl on a stage with a couple thousand Londoners watching while she played some very European classical music on her violin. Weird.
Well, that was pretty crowded so we then took a few more detours (got a little lost) and then made it to Covant Gardens. I didn't actually see a garden, but rather it was an open cobblestone square for performers surrounded by quaint shops and restaurants. This was a great part of the day. These two guys were just out in the square getting ready to do a show. They were funny. They were jugglers, I suppose, but it was the comedy that made it worth it. They kept our attention for a full hour, and my only regret is that I didn't have enough battery in my camera to record the whole thing. At the end they were up on 8-foot unicycles juggling back and forth. It was great.
By then our feet were hurting and it was time for lunch. We picked one of the small eaterys in the square (in the garden?) and had a great meal while the next act went on. It was a guy playing a cello with 5 high school or college aged kids with violins. They were awesome. They did lots of laughing and moving around while they played the classic Classical pieces that everyone knows (Pachelbells Canon, etc.) They were really good. The lead violinist was funny because he was a punk-looking kid, with a mohawk and multiple piercings, but he was a tremendous violinist AND he loved playing the classical stuff AND he was excellent with the audience. It was cool to watch. Everyone performs for tips, more or less, so their success is based on making the audience happy. To my mind, that is the way ALL entertainers should be compensated.
We strolled through a few shops and then decided to walk the river trail down to the Tower Bridge, which turned out to be more like a 2-mile hike.
It was very scenic though, with side walk performers and vendors everywhere and museums and significant historical sites AT LEAST every other block. The mix and match between old new was very intriguing. At times it looked like the new construction was out of place, and at other times it looked like it was just a hassle for society to preserve some old building. In both cases I found that I enjoyed the culture and the experience of just being there.
Finally we made it to the Tower Bridge, which is named that because it is next to the Tower of Londen, which actually isn't much of a tower. It is more like a really old castle, sinking into the river bank while the sky-scrapers go up all around it. I got pictures of both, although they are sketchy because of the dark.
At that point our legs were done, so we rode the tube back to the hotel (with serious delays because a big-time football game just finished down the road from the hotel) and cleaned up and enjoyed a nice Italian meal (made by real Italians). Now it is time to finish up this posting and go to bed. It has been a lot of fun, but tomorrow is when the work starts, so we will see how that goes.
Cheerio.
