London- Monday, July 22, 2013

We got up for hotel breakfast this morning and headed out for our first real day in London.  We wanted an introduction to the city that would give us a taste of as many sites as possible and we probably achieved that.

We started by crossing the Westminster Bridge by our hotel to the Houses of Parliament.  The bridge itself was quite dirty with trash, and Emma noticed that right away.  Mostly, though, we were looking up at the grand view of one of the most famous buildings in the world.  We heard Big Ben strike in the tower, and were generally amazed by the view.  The rising sun made the details on the building look particularly beautiful.  We followed a Rick Steves audio tour past Parliament, up Whitehall, past 10 Downing Street (which was the opposite of Parliament- quite unimpressive as a visual goes, in spite of its historic significance as the residence of so many Prime Ministers) and up to Trafalgar Square.  Nelson stood impressively on his column as the famous lions looked out beneath it.

From here, we caught the Original London Tour Company's bus.  It's a hop-on, hop-off service that we already had tickets for.  We decide not to hop-off anywhere and took the yellow line for a complete circuit.  We were on the bus for the live English language tour, and our live English language tour guide was named Alex.  The yellow line took us around Buckingham Palace, out to Hyde Park and Marble Arch, past the home of the Duke of Wellington, past Parliament again, into the city of London proper, via Fleet Street, past St. Paul's, near the Monument to the Great Fire of 1666, past the Shard, over London Bridge, Tower Bridge and several others, past the Tower of London and back to Trafalgar. We can't list all of the many, many sites that we passed.  One of the great things about this city is that it's filled not only with real historical sites, but mythical ones from literature as well.  For example, we passed the Reform Club where Phileas Fogg began and ended his journey to make it "Around the World in 80 Days."  London is certainly a city of legends, and we love that.  Seeing London from the open-air top of a double decker bus was a great way to be introduced to the city, and the breeze was keeping us cool.  We were on the bus for a little more than two hours (and, of course, Emma fell asleep).  It was a little hard to get pictures, because at times the bus lurched ahead quite quickly.  Julie said it reminded her of the Knight Bus from Harry Potter because of that.  But really we did like it.

One of the reasons that we didn't get off on the bus on the first circuit around was that we hadn't been able to pick up our London Passes to use for the sights we want to visit.   From Trafalgar Square, it was a short walk to Leicester Square (which we now think is pronounced "Lester") where we picked up our tickets.  By then it was time for lunch, and we ate at a Garfunkel's which is a British chain we've been seeing around town.  We saw a film crew taking video of a guy narrating something for a TV program or film, but we couldn't hear what he was saying.  He did at least three takes of the same thing, though.

With our passes in hand, we hopped back on the tour bus with plans to hop off at St. Paul's.  Julie had wanted to feed the birds there and had her tuppence all ready.  However, at Trafalgar Square, we saw signs that said you could be fined up to 500 pounds for feeding the birds, and it looked like the same was true at St. Paul's because we hardly saw any pigeons in either place.  Because it was already after 1:30, we decided to skip St. Paul's today and go on to the Tower of London.
We got to the Tower at just 2:00 and one of the tour from the Yeoman Warders (aka, the "Beefeaters") was starting and we quickly decided to take that.  Jimmy, our beefeater, had a good sense of humor.  The Tower of London has an enormously long and complicated history, and has served many functions over the years.  The Yoeman Warder's tour was heavy on the "juicy" parts of beheadings and tortures, but that's what most people come for, including us.   Julie nodded in recognition when stories were told of the executions of Thomas Moore, Anne Boleyn, and the disappearance of Richard III's nephews.  She's been remembering a lot from the British History class she took last year.  The bad part of the tour was that there was very little shade, and many of the stops had the sun beating down on us hard.  The news on the telly tonight said that it has been the hottest day of the year so far-- 33 degrees Celsius.  It's odd, though, the morning and evenings have been pretty cool with nice breezes, but we were certainly feeling the heat at the Tower.  We went into the White Tower, the oldest and best known part of the Tower, which was built by William the Conquerer shortly after he conquered Britain in 1066.  We saw many pieces of armour that were originally part of the "Line of Kings" exhibit that was one of the world's first tourist attractions, going back to the 1600s.  There were many pieces from Henry VIII.  As we left, first Julie and then Anna took pictures of the famous ravens.  Legend says that if the ravens ever leave the Tower, that the British monarchy will fall.  (More on them later.)

After the Tower of London, we still had time to go to the nearby Tower Bridge, which is probably even more famous than the Tower itself.  The Tower Bridge Experience takes you up into the towers of the famous drawbridge.  We saw short multimedia presentations of the designing of the bridge and walked across the two high spans between the towers.   We chose not to see the engine room that opens the drawbridge because we were hot and tired, and wanted to catch the cruise on the Thames.

Our bus ticket included a boat cruise on the Thames, and conveniently it left Tower Bridge to go back to the London Eye/Westminster area where our hotel is.  We were all hot and tired and sat in the first seats that we could find, and Anna fell asleep this time.  We did enjoy the narration and saw some sights from the river that we didn't see before, which is helping us plan for tomorrow and later.  For dinner, we ate at McDonald's, which doesn't sound very British, but we were right across the river from the Houses of Parliament again, eating outside with that tremendous view we started the day with.  One pigeon was apparently mad that Julie hadn't fed him at St. Paul's, and let her know by dropping a present on her shoulder.  From dinner, our hotel was right around the corner.

We were having something of a laundry crisis.  Hotels that don't have ice machines sure as heck don't have washers and dryers available.  Julie made a valiant attempt to wash some things by hand when we were in France, and she hung them around the room to dry.  It made it so humid in the room that not only did the clothes not dry, but the bed sheets felt damp too.  The clothes themselves got stinky.  Scott thought he was probably the stankiest smelling guy on the subway as we came into London yesterday.  When we asked in the hotel about a laundromat yesterday, they said it was closed on Sunday, but that it would be open until 9:00 tonight.   That's why we bought some extra t-shirts last night to get us through. Today, we learned, too late, that they closed much earlier than that. We had to use the Internet to locate one that was open. We found one, and had to take the Tube back towards St. Pancras, where we were yesterday, and walked two blocks to find it.  We're sweaty now, but our clothes will be clean again.

Post Script-- As we were coming home from doing the laundry, we saw that the London Eye was lit up red, white, and blue, but it didn't occur to us that these lights weren't the usual colors.  Upon arriving back at the hotel we heard that Will and Kate had the baby, a boy, now third in line for the throne.  It's an historic day, and we saw London during it!  We were leaving the Tower of London at the time he was born, and probably were taking pictures of the ravens.  Scott remembers saying that we wouldn't have time to visit Tower Bridge, but Julie said it was open later.  We checked the time and Scott said it was 4:25 according to his watch.  The time stamps that we have on the picture files confirm this, even though the camera is an hour ahead, still set to French time.