Stonehenge

Weird how Stonehenge is so close to the highway!

London Day 4

We started our final day with a trip to the Westminster Abbey. The most unfortunate thing is that you can't take pictures on the inside. {Apparently, I don't follow directions well.}

After several hours at Westminster, we headed over to the British Museum. We didn't have much time left before we had to head back to Gatwick to catch our flight, however, there was really one thing that we felt pretty strongly about having to see. The Rosetta Stone.

Here's a little video of our trip!

 

London Day 3

We started the day off with a little side trip to Friday street. Many many, years ago a small group of my family moved to the United States from London and their home was here on Friday Street. 

#5 Friday Street is no longer there, but this is where it would have been had it survived.

Friday Street was where the fish market families lived and worked in the 17th to the 19th centuries. It was fun to walk in those shoes for a few hours. To see where I had come from. 

We walked down Queen Victoria Street and then onto Peter's Hill and that led us directly to the Millennium Bridge. It crosses directly over the Thames right in front of the Tate Museum. It was completed in 2000 and has been nicknamed the "Wobbly Bridge" for which I can concur.

From the Millennium Bridge, we could see the Millennium Wheel, or as it's known, the London Eye. Luckily, I had pre-booked a ride and all we had to do was show up at the right time!

After all of that fun, we walked over to Buckingham Palace. They were setting up for the festivities of the Queen's Birthday.

Later that evening, we walked over to the Whitechapel District. You may recall a little historic event happening here in the 1880's with a gentleman named Jack the Ripper. We had a wonderful little English woman who walked us through all of the murder sites. Yeah, I know it's morbid and weird, but whatever. I wanted to go!

Welcome to London!

Ol' London Town

How excited was I to have 4 whole days in London?! Very! 

DAY 1

We arrived in London after a few hour plane ride from Olbia to Gatwick. I made the horrible mistake of wearing brand new shoes for this trip so I was forced to change into my flip-flops! We took the train from Gatwick and just watched the English countryside pass by. It was almost like watching an Eastenders episode. {I'm a sucker for British soap operas!}  

We got to Victoria Station and it was absolutely awesome. Just like I thought it would look! Classic Victorian architecture and surrounded by tall two-story red tour busses and English cabs! We checked into the Paddington Court Hotel just on the side of Kensington Gardens.

We walked over to Kensington Gardens and paused for a moment to take a picture of me at the Kensington Gate. {I digitally removed the spray paint above my head that said "I Like Feet."}

Funny thing is that it dropped like 15 degrees while we were walking around through the Gardens.

Super pretty! The Round Pond on one side and the Long Pond and the Serpentine on the other were surrounded by white swans! Luckily, the swans were pretty nice until someone {Terry} tried to get one of them to bite me. He's such a keeper!

Made our way around the pond through the Killer Swans and headed up the path to see Kensington Palace. It was built in 1605 and was the former home of Princess Margaret and Princess Diana. Kensington Palace was designed by famed architect Christopher Wren.  {Side note- Christopher Wren designed St. Bride's Chruch down the street from the Palace which was the inspiration for the Wedding Cake!}  It's historic and beautiful and filled with royal photos and paintings. It was amazing to be there! Apparently there were originally nine apartments that have been reduced and combined into about 4 where royal family members can still live and pay a nominal fee for rent. Was hoping to see some royalty while we were there, but that was not to happen!

The grounds are so beautiful and as you walk up to the side entrance, there is a gated fence that leads into the private gardens. I pointed the camera in there and snapped a few of what they call the Sunken Garden Pond. We stayed for a few hours and took in all of the sights.

The sky was starting to grey a little letting us know of the impending storm. {Side note- We totally missed the temperature drop nor the clouds} We headed down one of the trails and towards The Albert Memorial. It was built in 1872 and was commissioned by Queen Victoria in memory of her late husband, Prince Albert who died of typhoid in 1841. Just behind the Albert Memorial is Royal Albert Hall. Wish I could describe the color of the green in the trees here. The grass, the trees, just an amazing color. So, the sky let loose and we headed to a group of trees near Tyburn Brook just off of Hyde Park. We did not stay dry.

Headed down Regent Street until we got to Picadilly Circus. {Side Note- It's not really a circus; it's a roundabout!} Okay, I just have to say how cool the Underground is to me! Why didn't the US put more effort into public transportation?!? Why wasn't this a top priority!?! So, we walked around for a little while and went down Coventry to Leicester Square Gardens. There was an indoor mall, a ton of movie theaters, and tons of tourists taking pictures of everything. {Yeah, I think we were within those tourists taking the pictures.}

We definitely had a great tie on the first day. Lots of fun things to see, lots of awesome things to remember. We headed back to the hotel and on the way, saw a Swiss watch store that had a pretty neat little show that we, as well as ninety other tourists, stopped to take a few pictures. Then we had dinner at Hard Rock Cafe!

DAY 2

We hopped on a double decker red tour bus and headed out to see the city. First sop was All Souls Langham Place. It was designed by John Nash and was completed in 1824. It was severely damaged in the air raids in World War II.

BBC headquarters was the next place we passed and then into Oxford Circus.

Back into Picadilly Circus...

Headed down to Trafalgar Square. I was pretty bummed that Nelson's Column was under a construction netting for overhaul. That was a really important thing that I wanted to see.  Sad Face.

 Look kids, Big Ben.. Parliament. I was pretty sad to see that the street there was not on a roundabout like European Vacation had led me to believe. Pretty neat though!

 Marble Arch and Parliament as seen from the Bridge.

 St. Pauls.

 Tower Bridge. Some people were confused thinking that this was London Bridge.. NOPE!

 Tower of London was pretty awesome. I loved it!

 Madame Tussauds.

 Westminster Abbey