Iconic London

 June 18. Saturday

Today is the day to see iconic London. We get off the tube at London tower. We walk around it to the Tower bridge. It looks different when you’re on the road rather than the river. Now I really feel like I’m in London and not just any large city.  Hearing lots of languages, accents, collage of faces and dress. Scotland really is homogenous with lots of fair, blond, blue-eyed people. Quite a contrast.  

Now the atmosphere around London tower and the bridge is very light with people on holiday. Certainly different than the various times it was built, enlarged and more heavily fortified. For the Queen’s jubilee, wild flowers were planted in the moat area of London Tower. There is a movement to have more flowers for the germinators. Music was playing as well . They found that the needs of the flowers were quite different on the various sides of the castle. Some got more rain, sunshine, or wind.  By the size of the gardens, you can see how big the moat once was. Pretty intimidating I’d say.

Inside the walls is a whole little town that would have been pretty self sufficient with iron workers, weapon repair, housing. We went up into the armory and saw the life sized statues of the horses and suits of armor. 

He is made of spare parts in the armory

There is a ferry on the Thames that is part of the railway system so we took that to Westminster rather than the train. It was fun to be on the water for a little while. We passed the huge Ferris wheel and didn’t feel a need to ride it.

A demonstration was taking place outside of the parliament buildings. I don’t know if that is common or not. Big Ben was standing tall and proud. So many buildings that I’ve seen in pictures. I saw a sign I liked - White lies matter. Somehow I didn’t take any pictures of the protesters.

We queue up to enter Westminster Abbey. I’ve been in big churches before but this is in a category all to itself. So many kings, and queens and famous people buried here or memorialized here. If I were more of an Anglophile, I probably would have gotten more of a thrill at seeing the statues. The stained glass windows are magnificent.  I also really liked the ceiling in one of the smaller chapels.

 We were feeling hungry and in need of a break. We wandered a bit and found a Korean BarBQ that looked interesting.  It is so nice to have so many choices when being in a big city. After our break we were rejuvenated and ready to walk some more. We walked down to Saint James park which is by Buckingham palace. People were out enjoying the park and the nice weather. If I hadn’t been spinning poke stops while we were walking along, I would have missed the small little plaque in the walkway to Princess Diana.

Somehow our names didn’t get on the queen’s calendar for tea so we weren’t able to go inside Buckingham Palace. Can’t imagine what it would be like to live there. I think one could feel like a prisoner in your massive castle. I’ll take my simple way of life thank you very much.

By the time we get back to our place, we’re quite tired. My phone says we walked almost 18,000 steps. I have my left overs from last night and am quite happy.

Good night