Our first day was filled with a few problems, but after a good sleep we were excited to start seeing London. We like our slow mornings at home and our first tickets for the London Eye weren't until 12:30 so we could take our time having breakfast and getting going. The maintenance guy comes and flips the in-room breaker fixing our power issues from the night before so we don't need the power bar anymore and WiFi is working now in the hotel so it's already shaping up to be a better day.
We head to a coffee shop on the way to the tube station at Covent Glen market and have a nice croissant and coffee in an outdoor cafe:
We comment on the store displaying "Manitoba flour" as we take any chance we can get to point out to people we are from Canada and not the US. Even before red-hat wearing ultra US exceptionalisms, we always tried to show that were more humble Canadians who didn't go around insulting or threatening other countries.
We walk to Covent Garden which looks like a much nicer ByWard market. We get picked on by a busker doing a bit. He asked us where we were from and after we pointed out we were from Canada, he said "Ah right - we know you are actually from the United States but good on ya for trying to cover that up - but no, really I love the Americans".
We take the requisite picture of us near the iconic phone booth which did indeed have a phone in it (though many didn't and were just for photo ops)
Shaping up to be a beautiful sunny and warmish day we decide to walk over Waterloo bridge toward the London Eye. We arrive over an hour early for our scheduled time and after paying to use a public washroom we ask if we can go early and they let us. The wait in the standard queue was pretty short - maybe 15 minutes. The pods fit about 20-25 people or so but people move around for good vantage points. Nice clear day so we get some great snaps.
After about a 30 minute tour on the Eye - we check to see if we can change our booking time for the Thames River cruise which was for 3:45 and it's only 12:30 pm and we are right at the boat dock. We can so we queue up near the front of the line for the 12:45 pm cruise. A very sunny but somewhat windy day as we wind down the river seeing all the iconic sites from the boat (Big Ben/parliament, the Eye we were just on, Tower of London, St. Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge)
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| Big Ben and Parliament |
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| London Eye |
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| Tower Bridge |
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| Tower Bridge with 2 good looking tourists |
It was a nice tour even with the corny jokes from the tour guide. The view from the Eye plus this water tour gave us a good feel for the size and layout of London that we are going to be experiencing over the next few days.
We got off the boat and headed back over the Thames over Westminster bridge this time which has lots of great vantage points for Big Ben (which is technically is on the Elizabeth Tower and is formally named the Great Clock of Westminster).
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| More pictures of a clock - but this from a relatively unique angle |
It's still only midday-ish and it's early in the trip so we aren't tired from a ton of walking yet, and we are right near Westminster Abbey so we decide to add that to list of things to see today. At £31 per person, this is a bit more pricey then the other things we did today but seems like a must-see. It doesn't disappoint. we get audio guides and follow along for the most part. It's quite different than Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris but spectacular in it's own right.
Lots of crypts and memorials to dead people - many of whom the public walks right over top which seems a bit disrespectful. That's the big difference from Notre-Dame, Notre-Dame had it's share of memorials, but Westminster Abbey is littered with them - and not all of them religious figures - literary figures, military leaders and lots of dead kings, queens and princes. We love that the crowds so far in London have been considerably less than what they were in Paris and we get to actually experience the sights more completely. We meander around the cloisters and find a cat roaming around - Carrie is struggling with missing Murphy and Winston back home so takes every opportunity to interact with the animals we see. We see a spooky room where it looks like vampires sleep is actually a room where they hid valuables:
We stop for a glass of wine in St. James's park and recharge our batteries a bit. We're doing quite well though - already some 20,000 steps in for the day at this point.
We start heading back to the hotel and swing by Trafalgar square on the way.
And we happen to stumble on Leicester square with a fountain where we park ourselves for a bit and have a nice chat with a gentleman from Germany.
Pretty busy place for a Thursday night but after a rest we make our way back through the complex spaghetti maze of streets that is London downtown and get back to our hotel. We have a nice Italian meal with some great olives as an appetizer at Wildwood on the way home. A jam packed day of sights!
