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When you only have one day in London and want to cover as many sites as possible, the hop on hop off bus seems to be the way to go. I booked a ticket for the Big Bus and it included a one-way boat ride on the Thames as well as a trip on the London Eye, which I did not end up using. First, I found some breakfast at Café Concerto, just a short walk from one of the bus stops. Their garden breakfast was filling, fried eggs, and avocado on toast with hash browns, a cooked tomato, fried halloumi cheese (this seems to be everywhere here in the UK) and baked beans. I ate everything except the beans. This was a good choice as I did not need to eat again until close to 2:30.
The Big Bus has three different routes and stops at all the big sites plus a bunch of others. There is a running commentary and they provide complementary headphones that you take with you as you get on and off the bus. I did find the busses did not pick up as often as I thought they would so sometimes I had to
wait 20 minutes. At the end of the day, they were running really infrequently so I did a lot more walking, which was fine.
The first place I stopped was St Paul’s Cathedral. Like most churches in London, you need a ticket to enter unless you are there for a service so I did not go inside. The outside is pretty impressive with the large dome. Back on the bus I travelled a few more stops to the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge. This is a great area to take a walk. The Tower itself is a really impressive castle and I bet the tour is fantastic. The Tower Bridge offers some great views along the Thames. You can also pay to climb up and walk across between the two towers if you like. Both sides of the river have wide pedestrian areas and there were a lot of people sitting enjoying the beautiful day. I headed back across the bridge and headed to the boat dock. I was able to get on the 11:55 departure back to Westminster Pier.
The first mate gave some great commentary as we slowly glided along. It might be nice
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Fleet Streetto take a longer river tour if there is one. But this was a great way to get back to the Westminster area as I did buy a ticket to tour the Abbey. If you want to go inside you need to pre-book. Tickets sell out fast and if you only have one day you might miss out. Entrance includes the audio guide, which is super handy to know what you are looking at and the history. This place is huge and there are so many photo opportunities. Here I met up with Mary Queen of Scots at her final resting place. That really made the trip come full circle as I saw where she was born and where she was buried. The tombs of kings and queens are impressive but so are some of the other ones. Combine that with all the stained glass, carved ceilings and shiny gold fixtures and you cannot go wrong.
Today was also way more crowded than yesterday. I was a little spoiled on the Bank Holiday with the lack of traffic and pedestrians. Today I got the full London experience with people stopping in the middle of the sidewalk and trying to
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St Paul's Cathedral navigate around them with all the other people. It was crazy! I got back on the bus to Hyde Park. Here I walked around for a while and got a hot dog lunch. The park is huge and my feet were getting really tired. I tried to get back on the bus but the route back to my hotel area was going to be another 20 minutes and I could walk there in that amount of time. As I was by one stop a bus was actually there and I got on to ride across the river for one last view at Parliament and the Elizabeth Tower. I walked across the river on the Jubilee bridge, which put me right on the street for my hotel.
After a short rest I walked to a fish and chip place and brought that back to the room for dinner. And that ends my day in London, 30,000 steps later.
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