London

This past Saturday Jonny and I took a bus from base to spend the day in London and had a great time! Being the first time we were there and not just landing at Heathrow, there was so much to see! The city itself is just truly breathtaking. Everything is so big and distinct, but with a much more casual atmosphere than I would have expected. It’s not often you walk down a street and find buildings that are hundreds of years old next to one so modern you think it belongs in the future! The bus arrived by the London Tower at about 9:30am, and we wouldn’t be heading home until 7pm, so we had the whole day to ourselves. We started off by crossing the Tower Bridge to get to the Thames Riverwalk. Each side of the riverwalk is filled with malls, specialty shops, pubs, tourist attractions, and not only a Starbucks, but a Subway on every corner. Needless to say where our first stop was…so after I had my first iced caramel macchiato in 5 weeks, we took a tour of a WW2 British naval vessel H.M.S. Belfast which is now a floating museum on the Thames River between Tower Bridge and London Bridge. The boat is eleven thousand tons, has nine decks, and at one time held eight hundred men. We had fun seeing all the different compartments of the boat, and all the equipment that was used. The ship was so big that we actually got lost and it took about 20 minutes for us to find ourselves where we started =)
After our tour we decided to wander a bit, so we crossed the famous London Bridge where we walked by a few tourist kiosk stands with the big U.K. flag hats, and I “heart” London bags and shirts. There was also a bagpipe player who held quite the audience of pedestrians on the bridge. On the other side of Thames River we walked about three and a half miles where we passed St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Royal Court of Justice. What was so amazing to us is that each building was so detailed with all the stone engravings and side detailing. They were all just so unique and individual; you could look at one building for over an hour and still miss something. We then made our way back to Thames Street, and once we arrived back to the river, we were close enough to see the top of Big Ben in the distance; so we began the trek towards the Houses of Parliament. It all looked so big when we were a few miles away, then as we got closer and closer, it all got higher and higher! Once there, I probably took about 20 pictures of the buildings, trying to capture how unbelievable they were, but the pictures don’t seem to do justice to what you see when you are standing right next it!
By this time we had probably walked about five miles and sure were hungry, so we ate lunch on the pier at a restaurant called Giraffe in the South Bank Center where we had some much needed food and drinks! The pier was a fun, but quite random, place. There were big patches of grass where people and families would sit to eat their hot dogs and drink their “boozie smoothie”, while the walkway was filled with various entertainers, musicians, artists, dancers, and people dressed up really funny to take pictures with. On the pier by the London Eye are the London Aquarium, and various artistic museums. Then later in the afternoon we headed back towards the Tower Bridge where the bus would be picking us up. On our way back we walked through a tunnel which is the entrance to the London Dungeon , which I think is a scary rollercoaster ride, and then stopped in to have a drink at a pub to relax and wait for the bus. There we enjoyed a nice pint of warm beer, then crossed the Tower Bridge one more time, and got on the bus to head home!