Going into today we had a plan…and it worked, for the most part. When we got to London yesterday we purchased a hop-on, hop-off bus tour pass for today instead of getting a London Underground Travelcard. So our plan for today was to find the hop-on tour pick up point closest to our hotel and take that to our hostel for the next two nights. This stop was near Paddington Station about 2 km from our current hotel…but when you start off going “left, left” as the ethnic (is that the right word?) lady at the reception desk instructed in order to get to Paddington when you needed to go left, right the distance is more around 3 or 4 km depending on how soon you come to the realization that you’re headed in the wrong direction. Well we finally did find where we needed to go and dropped our stuff off at Journey’s Kings Cross / St. Pancras hostel then set out on our tour for the day.
We started by taking the closest hop-on bus to the hop-on river boat and traveled along the Thames River from Westminster all the way to the Tower Bridge. The boat ride provided a view to the majority of the sites in the area at a nice leisurely pace before going by land the rest of the day. We walked around the Tower of London and then went to the Tower Bridge which we actually paid to go up in….worth it? Not quite sure, but it provided a good view and I (maybe not Erica) found the hydraulic lift for the bridge interesting.
It is hard to pick out the best part of the tour since it allowed us to cover so much ground. What we did notice is that they have very large doors on many of the old cathedrals and museums (huge, see picture below), some streets are very small and narrow because after London burned down in 1666 they rebuilt it exactly as it was (minus the flammable building materials, now only stone and marble), and no matter what the English tour guides were talking about it was weirdly entertaining because of the odd expressions they’d use and things they’d point out (“oh there’s the sun, I’ve heard of it before, I think I quite like it”). Summary of the tour Trafalgar Square was beautiful, Piccadilly Circus was busy and provided prime people-watching opportunities, Buckingham Palace provided some fun pictures, but we didn’t bother with Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum because, well…what’s the point? Probably the coolest experience was St. Paul’s Cathedral, which sits at the highest point in London, where we managed to catch the 5:00 pm Evensong service.
All for now
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