London
I was trying to figure out the best way to blog about London since I wasn’t really able to post daily as I was hoping to. I think I’m just going to break it up into sections based on different things I saw. Pictures are at the bottom. We took just under 1,000 of them, but I narrowed it down to something like 290 for the slideshow.
The city itself - London was surprisingly clean. It felt much more taken care of than Philly or NYC, but there were hardly any trash cans anywhere in the city. It was kind of weird actually. Where the hell do people put their trash when they’re walking around the city!?! The only exception to the cleanliness was the Thames. That thing looked pretty disgusting. Maybe even worse than the Hudson.
Getting around the city was very easy. We mostly walked since I think that you get to see more that way. There were a lot of things that we “accidentally” saw as we ended up just walking by them while on the way to go see other things. But I also like trying out the public transit in different cities to see what it’s like, so for a few longer journeys that were more across the city, we took the Underground. The London Underground seemed a lot better to me than NYC’s subway. The trains ran very frequently and every single platform (that we were on, at least), had a very accurate sign saying when the next couple of trains would be arriving. Only a few subway stations in NYC have this. The trains were also much less jolty than NYC. We only took the bus a couple times, but figuring that out was really easy with the maps at each stop. The bus stops also had the digital displays with the times for each bus.
Before going to London, I didn’t realize that most of the buses, in central London anyway, were double deckers or that there were going to be so many red phone booths. It was kind of neat actually.
Overall, the city really didn’t feel all that much different than any American city I’ve been to. It’s a lot older and has some amazing architecture, but England and the U.S. share so much culture that you barely feel like you’re in another country. The only things that I didn’t like about London were how expensive it is (the Underground works out to be roughly $6.25/ride) and how early things close at night.
Big Ben and Parliament – As you’re walking eastward towards Parliament, you can see Big Ben from a few blocks away and it’s really amazing just how big it is. It was a really beautiful site. Parliament is pretty crazy too. We didn’t have time to go into either of them, but we walked around a few times outside and took lots of pictures.
Westminster Abbey – Westminster Abby was surprisingly one of my favorite parts of the trip. From the outside, it’s really beautiful and the architecture is amazing with the flying buttresses and all. Inside, it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. We spent a couple of hours walking around and doing the audio tour. It was really worth the time. It’s crazy how many people were buried there and how insane some of the tombs, chapels, and effigies are. Unfortunately, they didn’t allow any pictures to be taken, but I snuck a somewhat blurry one of the High altar with my iPhone. Had we been allowed to take pictures, I’m pretty sure I would have taken at least 500 of them.
St. James Park and Buckingham Palace – From Westminster Abbey, we walked through St. James Park up to Buckingham Palace. This thing, like much of what we saw in London, is really gigantic. When we walked down the side of it, there was some crazy barbed wire with actual spikes going on. They REALLY don’t want anyone trying to get in there.
Abbey Road – I had to check this out! There isn’t really much to see, but so much of the music that I love and is important to me wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for some of what happened at Abbey Road Studios. I snapped a couple pictures out front and spent some time reading all of the things people wrote on the wall out front of it. I wish I had thought to bring a marker so that I could have added something myself. We also snapped a couple pictures crossing Abbey Road and saw a woman risk her toddler’s life taking a picture of him crossing as well. Apparently, a lot of people have died trying to take pictures here since it’s such a busy street.
Jack The Ripper – This might have been the only mistake of the trip, besides not having a couple extra days. We wanted to see some of the places where the victims were found, but we didn’t really want to deal with an actual guided tour. I found a self-guided walking tour online and we followed it from my phone, but it was actually kind of weak. At one point, we crossed paths with a guided tour and stopped to listen for a minute. I think it would have been a lot more fun and interesting if we had just gone with the tour.
The London Dungeon – The London Dungeon is pretty much just a haunted house kind of thing, but it travels through many of the darker times of London’s history. It was actually quite fun and possibly one of the best I’ve ever seen. The Dungeon starts off with a mirror maze that is seriously intense. It took us quite a while to find our way through it. Instead just having people walk through on their own, groups are actually guided through by actors and the whole thing finishes off with a free-fall style ride to simulate being hanged. The best part of the Dungeon was the Jack The Ripper section. This sort of made up for us not doing the guided Jack The Ripper tour. They went through most of the story and mentioned all of the places that we had just seen the night before which was pretty awesome.
Oh, and I was sentenced to death for being American.
St. Paul’s Cathedral – St. Paul’s was one of the things that we just kind of stumbled upon while we were walking around. It was kind of hard not to, though, it’s absolutely gigantic. We didn’t go inside more than a few steps because didn’t have the time, but like Westminster Abbey, it was really beautiful, although, it did look a bit less interesting and intricate. St. Paul’s is actually something that we ended up coming by a few other times as we were walking around since the Millennium Bridge lets you off right in front of it.
Millennium Bridge – I was told to see this at night, but we couldn’t really work out a way to be anywhere near it while it was dark out. Still, during the day, it was pretty neat.
Tower of London – I don’t even know how to describe just how massively gigantic the Tower of London is. I think we spent three hours there and didn’t even get to see it all. The line for the Crown Jewels was insanely long so we skipped it, but still, this was absolutely amazing. It both made me wish we had another day so we could have gone to Windsor Castle and made up for the fact that we could go there.
Tower Bridge – We only just walked across this and took some pictures, we were pressed for time when we were over there so we didn’t get to see the exhibit, but even just walking across it was an experience. And you can actually see it very clearly from inside the Tower of London since it’s right next to it. So a lot of my pictures from the Tower have it in the background.
London Eye – I’m not a ferris wheel fan at all. Not one bit. It’s pretty much the only ride that I don’t like, but there was no way that I was going to pass this up. And it actually wasn’t even all scary since you’re in a glass enclosed egg thing. The view from inside was unmatched by anything else I saw on my trip with the exception of the Eiffel Tower (the Paris post will be up in a few days). You can see all of central London and all of the other landmarks that we saw. The ride lasts like twenty minutes which was pretty perfect. It was long enough to get to take a good look at everything, but not too long that you were waiting for it to end.
Tate Modern – This is a modern art museum at the opposite end of the Millennium Bridge from St. Paul’s Cathedral. We didn’t pay for any of the exhibits and just stuck to the free stuff, but we were still there for a solid three hours. The museum has works by Andy Warhol, Herman Nitsche, Picaso, Jackson Pollack, and many more, but my favorite was by Miroslaw Balka called 480x10x10. It was simply 480 pieces of bar soap on a steel cable hung from the ceiling. There was also a really awesome room filled with Soviet era artwork that I spent a lot of time in.
Pubs and food – I had heard some bad things about the food in England, but it wasn’t that bad, really. The first night, I had a garlic burger and a garlic beer from a place called Garlic & Shots. They didn’t name the place that just for show. The beer actually had pieces of garlic in it. It was really good…at first.
Dirty Dicks had a really good meat pie, though I’d never actually had one before, so I guess I can’t say, but it was awesome. They also had hand pumped beer which was pretty sweet. And we also went to Lamb & Flag which was apparently a hang out spot for Dickens back in his time. We only stayed for one drink though because we were starving and they didn’t serve any food.
Other stuff – Our second day there, we witnessed some soccer hooliganery in the Undergound. It was a pretty awesome vibe, very loud and intense, without being dangerously violent like Eagles fans.
I’m not a Star Trek fan. Never was. I tried watching it as a kid, but never really got into it. Yet, the previews for this iteration sold the hell out of it for me. I got really excited for it. And all of the positive reviews for it didn’t hurt either.