A Smattering of London

The London Eye

London is an awesome place to just randomly be, as I was a lot this trip.  I went down for the day to meet up with JS and D when they were there, had a lot of half days in between catching trains and planes, and then stayed for another week before S and Spain.  It really feels like my home away from home, and I love wandering around in it.

With JS and D, I hit a lot of the classics in the Westminster area, such as Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and Parliament before making our way past Downing Street, a lot of monuments by the river, and the parade grounds, where I always feel sorry for the guards on duty who have to be photographed with every tourist.  Then Trafalgar Square, where a large screen was set up for viewing the Paralympics.  After that, we met up with one of JS's friends in a pub and heard some great stories about their travels together in Africa, including about how JS's nickname became something close to 'Rat Boy,' before I had to go catch my train back to Northampton.

The Regent's Garden

I spent another half day in London before catching the Chunnel to Paris, mostly walking through Regent's Park and enjoying the gardens.  Things might have gone a lot smoother had I realized I didn't need to travel all the way to Victoria to make my train, but luckily I figured out I was at the wrong station in time to still make it to Paris.

Buckingham Palace

The start of my week in London, after all the excitement of traveling around with everyone, was pretty quiet, but I visited a lot of the sights again, walking along the river and taking in the London Eye, the many bridges, the Tate Modern and the Globe Theater.  I went to the National Gallery one day and sketched some pictures, and went to see The Magic Flute at the London Coliseum another.  I spent another day in Greenwich, and saw them taking down one of the Olympic stadiums where they had apparently hosted dressage as I walked up the hill to the Observatory and wandered through their science collection and the Maritime museum.

Trafalgar Square

One of the best things about a lot of museums in Europe is that access to them is free.  They ask for a donation if you can spare it, but people who can't necessarily afford it can still come and soak up the culture and history of the cities.  The exhibits are a lot more family friendly and...can I just say cooler in general?  I don't know why.  Maybe I'm just so familiar with the offerings of American museums that the European take is refreshing.

I naturally chose the rainiest day to do one of the free tours of London, and though it was freezing and everyone was soaked by the beginning of the hour and a half (yeah, the beginning) I still had a really good time.  I think I've said it before, but the concept of the free tour then tip as much as you think is appropriate at the end is dynamite.  The tour guides you get are so much more outgoing and willing to please because of it.

The Australian War Memorial

And although I'd seen all the sights before, as I'd hoped, the stories were fantastic.  I learned a lot of history about the statues in the area, which I hadn't known before, and other little things about why the police in the UK are called Bobbies or Peelers (they were created by Robert Peeler).  Taking this tour also made me seem super smart when I went to a lecture at the Maritime Museum, as I was able to answer one of the questions from something I remembered a few days earlier from the tour about the battle of Trafalgar and Lord Admiral Nelson.  It was an interesting history.

I also picked up a week long London heritage pass for overseas visitors mainly for my trip to Dover, which definitely made it worthwhile.  The other little things to be seen around the area were okay, but nothing special, although there are a ton of things you can use it on if you're good about it and are able to travel.  I would definitely want to have one if I was living in England again for a while and had decent access to a car to drive to a lot of these places.  But I went into the Jewel Castle, which was neat but not much, and figured out that I could get into some of the back rooms of Westminster Abbey if you go in the back entrance by the school for boys.  They're very much on the honor system there, which is a nice change, and I was honest about it and didn't go into the Abbey itself, which would have been easy.  But I've seen it before.  :)

British Supreme Court

And the best thing was that it was chocolate week!  Free samples of chocolate everywhere, and I made the most of it.  Yum!

I also randomly walked into the justice building (okay, so you can't randomly walk into there, they have security and a metal detector like most justice buildings) and found out that it was the headquarters for the British Supreme Court, which has only actually been around since 2009.  Finally something we have in the US that is older than the British version!  Part of the building is older, but they do have a nice new room as well.  The security guards were really nice, too, and kind of told me a few things about the rooms when I asked.  I liked the crest, which brought together the flowers of Wales, Scotland, Ireland and England in a classy way.  But it was kind of hard to tell the Welsh one, because it's more of a plant than a flower.

The British Library

I had one more half day in London before I headed to Spain, and I spent it at King's Cross Station and at the British Library.  I'm really glad they made Platform 9 3/4 a permanent part of the station with the renovations, even if it's not where it's supposed to be or where they filmed it.  It is a working train station after all.

And the British Library is always fantastic.  It's impossible to get a pass to view the really old texts of course (it's only if you're a student writing a thesis on something that you're able to get in, and only after filling out exhaustive forms) but they still have a nice collection of important works on display for the public, such as the oldest version of the New Testament known to exist, which is where we take all our translations from.  They also had a lot of works written in the hands of their creators, such as Jane Austen, Mozart, Bach, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, and people that only English majors would appreciate, like John Dryden, Chaucer, Malory, and Virgina Woolf.  And many others.  Definitely my kind of exhibit.  They had old Shakespearean folios and the Magna Carta too.

And that was it for my time in London!  Until next time....