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Thought the blogs were over? Nope, we just got busy now that we are finally home and it has taken us a while to get these last few together. Just pretend we're still out there traveling.
We traveled over to England from Amsterdam via Brussels and arrived into the Kings Cross/ St. Pancras train station. In order to get around town we picked up our Oyster cards (local transport passes) and Underground maps so we could navigate the great but somewhat confusing metro system. It took us a little time to figure out all of the closures and best routes but we definitely put our travel passes to good use and became very familiar with the Underground over the next week. From the train station we headed out to our hostel which was located in the suburbs northwest of downtown and settled in for the evening. That evening we were reminded just how weak the dollar was against the pound when we went out for dinner and a movie.
We started our first full day in London with a walking tour of the city. We started off by the Tower of London and then walked down to the
Thames River where we were just able to make out the Tower Bridge out of the fog. We walked past the Customs House and down to the London Bridge before walking to the scaffolding covered monument commemorating those who died in the great fire of 1666. We then headed into the city to see the Royal Exchange and the Bank of London before heading to St. Paul’s Cathedral. We then headed back down to the river to see the Millennium Bridge, Globe Theater, and Tate Modern Museum and finishing in the Temple District where we could see the church of the Knights Templar. We finished the tour at the Royal Courts of Justice where we got a good look at the press waiting for Paul McCartney.
We headed back downtown that evening to see Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty’s Theater. The show has been at this theater for the past 27 years without interruptions. Needless to say the show was amazing and the cast was great.
We headed into town for another walking tour the next day. We started off at Buckingham Palace. We saw the changing of the guard there and then headed down the
road to St. James Palace to harass the guards some to see if we could get some chuckles out of them. From there we headed through the high-end shopping area where the royal family shops from time to time and then up to Piccadilly Circus. The tour continued on down to Leicester Square and then down to Trafalgar Square where we saw Nelson’s column and hawks patrolling the square for pigeons. We continued on through the Admiralty Arch, over to the Horse Guard house, and then over to the underground offices where Churchill ran things during WW II. We finished the tour by heading over to the House of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.
The next day we got in some shopping at Piccadilly Circus and then headed down to Westminster Abbey to tour the interior. The inside of the church is amazing and contains tombs of some of the most famous people throughout history. Some of our favorites were Darwin, Chaucer, Livingstone, Shakespeare, and Newton.
Our next sight was the British Museum. We headed there the next day and spent two or three hours checking out as many of the great exhibits as we could. We missed out
on seeing the Terracotta Warriors that were there on temporary exhibit, but we were able to see the Elgin Marbles which is an amazing collection of marble statues collected from the Acropolis in Greece. We also had time to see the Rosetta Stone.
From the British Museum we headed out to the Putney area of town to catch up with old friends of my parents from when they lived in London for a bit. We met Liz and Ellodie at Liz’s house for some afternoon tea and cake. It was great to catch up with them and to hear how things were with them and to talk to them about all of our traveling adventures.
That evening we headed back to downtown to catch up with some friends from the area that we had met during our travels. We met up with Cathy who we knew from our overland trip and her cousin and Ajit, Vinal, and Sam whom I had met in Australia. As always it was great to catch up with people we had met on our travels and have them show us around. We caught up with them for dinner and some fun around Piccadilly.
The next day we headed down to the Tower of London to tour the site. We checked out the crown jewels which were amazing. The diamond on Queen Mary’s crown was huge. We also checked out the royal armory which had some amazing suits of armor, weapons from the day, and even some forms of torture used in the tower.
From the Tower we headed down the river and across the bank to catch up with our friend Kathy at the Eye of London. Another typically cheap London attraction (not!), we each forked out the 15 pounds to ride the huge Ferris wheel around for 40 minutes or so and see the city from a new vantage point at 130 meters above the city. We did get a great view of the houses of parliament and buildings around the river but I can’t really say that I would pay to go up again. From there we walked Kathy to her bus station for her ride back up to Nottingham and said our goodbyes to another friend met on our travels.
We decided to get out of London for a day and so we got some train tickets
to Salisbury and rode out there the next morning. Our main purpose for the journey out to Salisbury was to catch the bus out to Stonehenge. We got some sandwiches in town and grabbed the bus for the ½ hour bus ride out of town to the countryside and the site of Stonehenge.
Believed to be erected around 2200 BC, the great stone monument sits in the middle of the English country side and is surrounded by circular earthen banks and ditches that may date back to 3100 BC. In addition to Stonehenge itself there are other earthen monuments throughout the area, some within the site of Stonehenge, that date from roughly the same time. Though it was a cold and windy day we spent and hour and half or so walking around the site learning about where it may have come from, where the stones came from, and how the site is set up. It really is one of the amazing sites of the world and was well worth the trip.
We headed back to Salisbury from Stonehenge and had time to walk through the town some and visit the great cathedral there. The cathedral was built
in the mid 13th century and houses one of the four remaining original copies of the Magna Carta. It was amazing to see one of the original copies of a document that had such a drastic effect on present day law and constitutional documents.
The next day we took our last ride on the Underground to the train station and caught our train to the north and our next country, Scotland. During our ride north we got a great view of the beautiful English countryside and some of the northern cities. We finished our time in England with a ride up the coast and crossed into Scotland.
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Brad
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Where is Paul McCartney? Where is Simon Cowell? Where is Ozzy?