Day 3 – Iconic London

Buckingham Palace

Today was the day for our 9-hour Full Day London tour.  The idea behind the tour is to hit all of the London icons in one shot, if possible, and we pretty much accomplished that. The tour included stops at Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower of London, a cruise on the Thames and with a final stop at the London Eye.

Big Ben (note London Eye in the background)

The tour required an earlier start that we normally like to do (before 7 am), but as we had to be downtown at Victoria Coach Station in time for the start of the tour, it was necessary. Fortunately our body clocks are still off, so we didn’t even sleep until the alarm. The weather has been changeable both days we have been here and today was no exception. We started out today sunny but cold, probably in the upper 30s. It warmed to about 50 and then promptly clouded over and began to mist and eventually turned to a light rain requiring umbrellas.  We were both at the upper end of the layers of warm clothes that we brought but it was okay.

Westminster Abbey

The guide was pretty good at bringing out the small “quirks” of the way that Brits look at life.  For example, he told the story of why everyone was upset over the memorial to the Duke of Wellington memorial inside St. Paul’s Cathedral. There are two basic reasons. One reason was that it took something like 75 years to complete, but of course the original sculptor died in the process and someone else had to take over, so that is understandable. But the main complaint is that they show Wellington on his favorite horse which he road for something like 60 hours at the battle of Waterloo.  The complaint is in the fact that they show the horse facing the altar while a statue of the pious Queen Anne was facing out of the church onto a street lined with pubs.  In typical British humor, the guide said he thought showing the other end of the horse facing the altar would be worse.

Tower of London

The Tower of London is the site of many famous executions and also the location of the Crown Jewels.

Tower Bridge

The Tower Bridge as seen from the Tower of London. Our cruise went underneath.

Parliament

The Houses of Parliament as seen from the London Eye, which was the largest Ferris Wheel at the time it was built in 2000. Note that the bridge in the foreground is the Westminster Bridge which was the site of the recent terrorist incident where a car was driven into the crowd. We crossed the bridge and there is a small memorial on the spot where it occurred.