Blogs from Greater London, England, United Kingdom, Europe - page 15

We had passes to the Tower with an entry of 10 am. We have walked there before but this time we took the tube, a quick ride to Tower Hill where the common people were executed back in the day. I wanted Zaya to see King Henry VIII’s armor and where the kings and queens lived. We checked out the Crown Jewels first, which are always impressive. Crowns so large and heavy as to make a person lose inches in height. From the Crown Jewels we went to the White Tower. I made sure that she saw the armor of Henry VIII, and how large it was around the middle. After lunch we went to the torture chamber but there was not much to see. Zaya had heard of the 2 boys who had disappeared and ... read more

We had tickets to Les Mis for tonight and we didn’t want to miss this one theater that we still had reservations for. The theater was set to start at 7 pm so we did have the day to play. Zaya wanted to see the Big Ben and that seemed a good place to start. We went by the London Eye and decided that we could do that if we could finish up the other sites. We walked to Big Ben but it was covered with scaffolding, then went on to Buckingham Palace but the Queen did not come out to wave at us. Alas! As we walked from our hotel, there is a square where there always seems to be something going on. Today there was a guy who was juggling knives and then knives ... read more

When we planned this trip, the UK had announced that they would open to everyone on July 10th. Consequently, we purchased tickets for theater, Highclere Castle and the Globe for dates after that. After we left the US and were well underway in our travels, the UK announced that they would not open up until July 19th. Anyone arriving before July 19thwould need to quarantine for 10 days. We had lots of discussions on what to do, our options: 1. Go to the UK and take our chances that things would change, 2. Go to another location from Paris and wait for July 19th, 3. Go home. We decided quickly that we didn’t want to go home so we started thinking about where we might want to go for 10-days and how we’d spend the 5-days ... read more

We did the trekking course on Dollis Valley Greenwalk from Whetstone to Mill Hill East on 11th May and found its northern route course – we decided to do the latter course on 31st May. I felt that we would be doing country walk; so we would have a picnic lunch at Arnos Park in the lunch time before approaching Whetstone/Totteridge. The 251 bus was running as normal on the Bank Holiday and it brought us to Whetstone/Totteridge station. There were two concrete paths running northwards – one was footpath and the other one was cycle path – we were advised to stick to the right-hand path. Like the Dollis Valley Greenwalk towards Mill Hill, the course was running along Dollis Brook, but we were largely shown open space surrounded by wide variety of trees, rich ... read more

Our Highgate Literary Walk on 2 May finished at Waterlow Park – we liked its beautiful scenery of the park – and we decided to visit there on 9th May. We took the No.41 bus to Archway and walked up on the Highgate Hill High Street towards the park. We strolled through main ponds, looked at waterfowls, aquatic plants and explored the park in the sunny afternoon. We found the park was situated on the hill; after climbing up towards Highgate Village, it offered breathtaking views of central London and skyscrapers. We also found the cemetery and Gothic architectural style of buildings on the Westside of the park, which we visited the previous Sunday. While looking at the nature around the lakes, we found a very intriguing scene – there were a couple of turtles sitting ... read more