Vacation Pt 2 – London!
Once arriving in London for day five, we went out to our hotel which was in Greenwich, just southeast of the city of London. Greenwich is the place where they set the time zones and establish all things dealing with time and maritime to help sailors. The Royal Observatory was right by our hotel, it houses some of the first telescopes ever used to chart the stars and is the ceremonial sight where the Prime Meridian cuts through to divide the eastern and western hemispheres.
If you have a Facebook account, you can view the first set of photos here.
While in London, we took the tube (subway) everywhere. Our hotel was centrally located to a line that would take us pretty much anywhere we wanted to go. On the way to dinner for the first time in London, our group experienced rush hour traffic in the tube! It took 3 different trains to transport our large group because each carriage was packed. When I say packed, I mean when you looked at the amount of people in the carriage, you would think there isn’t any more room but yet 10 people would show you otherwise.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped off at Piccadilly Circus. It is London’s version of New York’s Time Square. It has all of the cheesy touristy shop, big name stores and many theatres. This was the place where Marlyse found the cheesy Will and Kate memorabilia she was dying to buy! London’s sun doesn’t seem to go down until around 10:30-11pm but still comes up at 5am.
Day six was our coach tour on a fine and drizzly morning. We hopped off to take photos in front of the Houses of Parliament which have the iconic clock tower known as Big Ben, actually the clock isn’t Big Ben, it is the bell that tolls that goes by the name. We then stopped at St. Paul’s Cathedral but didn’t have enough time to go inside. While just trying to make it around the outside, the rain came down immensely. We scurried back to where our coach dropped us off all to find…no coach. My umbrella is in my seat in the bus, because this was only supposed to be a 15 minute stop. We got back on the bus drenched but still with high spirits. Our guide was explaining everything we were seeing with haste as our bus driver seemed to forget that we were on a bus tour and not a bus race. I snapped quite a few photos that didn’t amount to much and I can’t seem to recall what any of the buildings I was shooting were, it’s OK though because we still had a free day and planned to see all those sights then.
We made our way to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guards all to find we were about 1 minute too late. But we were wrong. They weren’t finished yet and we only saw the first set of guards pass, therefore, we were able to see the changing of the guards. If this day isn’t packed already, our coach drove about an hour outside of London city limits to go to the Hampton Court Palace. This palace was something like a retreat house for King Henry VIII. We saw the grandeur of a dining hall where he liked to entertain, the haunted hallway where one of his wives is said to haunt because she was executed before being able to plead her case with the king and the old clock tower that has the sun orbiting around the earth showing us how back then, there was a geocentric view of the universe. Back in London we visited Carnaby Street, a trendy pedestrian area with stores, pubs, restaurants and street performers. The night we saw an incredible play called “Blood Brothers” at the Phoenix Theater.
Day seven we headed out to Stonehenge…STONEHENGE!!! It’s amazing how exciting a bunch of rocks can be! Just a few days prior to us being there was the summer equinox. Since Stonehenge is thought to be a pagan place of worship dating back thousands of years ago, it is still used as a ceremonial place for events like solstices and the equinox. They actually allowed people to go right up to the stones on this day, too bad we weren’t there a few days sooner! After Stonehenge we headed out to Bath…pronounced baaaa-th! There, archeologists discovered ancient Roman baths built around million-year old hot springs. This was positively the best museum Marlyse and I have ever seen. It really took the visitor back in time. Using technology, and replicas, the museum was built into the Roman bath houses. Not only were we able to learn about the ancient ruins but we could see where they were excavating even more. They even had actors peppered around the exhibits playing the part of Roman visitors to the bath houses.
If you have a Facebook account, you can view the second set of photos here.
Day eight was our free day in London, my favorite day. We started out getting different train directions from a local telling us to take a different route. It got us to London Bridge 20 minutes earlier but found out later our tickets shouldn’t have worked for that train! Good thing there wasn’t an authority checking tickets on board! We got better photos (not in a coach) of the Houses of Parliament, went inside Westminster Abbey then got on the top of a double-decker bus. We had Steak and Ale pies for lunch to top with England’s version of Sangria – Pimms. Then we visited the British Museum where we saw the Rosetta Stone, preserved mummies, the body of an Egyptian from 3400BC and more Greek/Roman artifacts in better condition than those in Paris. We had an Indian dish for dinner and celebrated one of the group members 22nd birthday.
After this packed day, we get back to the hotel to grab all of our belongings and jump onto an overnight train ride to Edinburgh, Scotland. The train takes off at midnight and arrives at 7am. Marlyse and I are given bunk beds and a unique experience. Right at midnight we begin celebrating our group leader’s birthday on the train! I also found the hallway’s a bit close together and figured out how to scale the walls like Spiderman. (Photos of this are in the Edinburgh section)
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