England 1997
December 15, 1997 – Day 2
London!
We arrive in Waterloo station. It is a huge, but very pretty, train station with a central clock that, apparently, is a famous meeting place, as it is suspended quite high above the floor! We check our luggage into a storage facility, since we’re meeting John, Marianne, and Mark in London later, and head out on our adventure!
What followed, after arriving at Waterloo, was a spectacular, albeit whirlwind, tour of London.
Since we really didn’t have a substantial amount of time to spend, we decided on the train ride into London that we would hit all of the big “tourist” spots, rather than spend a great deal of time in the museums and galleries. It was a decision we had to make, so perhaps we’ll spend our next visit to London indoors!
First stop: Trafalgar Square and Lord Nelson’s Column. It turns out that, for New Year’s, the water has to be drained from the fountains in the Square, as there have been a few druken revellers that have drowned themselves in the relatively shallow water. Sounds like a bit of “cleaning out the gene pool” to me… 🙂
Admirality Arch is a beautiful set of three arches between two equally lovely older buildings. These were the arches where Princes Phillip, Charles, William, and Harry started their long journey behind Diana’s casket during her funeral procession.
We proceeded passing the Royal Horse Guards (yes… even the horses remain almost motionless!) and Downing Street.
Of course… What visit to London is complete without a shot of “Big Ben” and the Houses of Parliament? It’s amazing (grin) how famous landmark buildings look exactly like all of the pictures you’ve seen. It was almost surreal…
The first sight of Westminster Abbey leaves only one word… stunning.
This is the cathedral used for Diana’s funeral, and to see it in person after seeing it on television or from other pictures is a wonderful experience.
We were fortunate enough to arrive at a time where the Westminster choir was practicing. They filled the Abbey with such a heavenly sound. It made the entire visit that much more memorable.
On our way to Buckingham Palace, we crossed through St. James’ park. A lovely stream flowed in the middle, and you could imagine that the park was filled during the warmer months with families and people on their lunch breaks.
There was a very friendly grey squirrel along the path as well. Apparently, the grey squirrel was not a native, but imported. They were so hardy that they took over and effectively pushed out the native red squirel.
And then… Buckingham Palace!! Yep… this is the Queen’s house. She’s not home, though.
We can tell, because the royal flag is not flying above the palace and the guards are standing at attention, rather than marching. We take a few pictures and look at the palace, when Julian notices a familiar-looking Jaguar driving away.
Sure enough, the flag’s flying now… Queen Elizabeth is home now, and the guards are marching!
After Buckingham Palace, we decided that hunger was getting the best of us, so we headed out across Green Park and ended up at the Rock Garden Cafe (similiar to the Hard Rock Cafe here in the ‘States). Famous rock-and-roll acts (from U2 to The Police) played in the basement here before they were famous!
After lunch and a brief bout of shopping in a great open-air market (Covent Garden… *cough* when you say that!), we played “sardines” in the subway and headed off across town to see some more sites!
Since I’ve never lived in a large city with subways, the London “Underground” was definitely a new experience for me. The “toob” (tube — underground — subway!) is a great place to “people watch” as, to be expected in any big city, has a large variety of people to watch!!!
Okay! Fully fed and ready to continue the London Tour ’97, we head out again!
Since it’s late December, and England is fairly far north in comparison to Texas, it gets dark quicker in the winter than I’m used to and by 4 pm it’s completely pitch black out! But, that’s okay, as everything still remains open and looks even more magical all lit up with Christmas decorations and lights!
It’s obvious that both the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. and the Texas state capitol building in Austin are modeled after St. Paul’s Cathedral. It’s very pretty and quite the sight, lit up at night.
On our way over to London Bridge, we pass a bank building that had some ruins on display in front. It turned out that they were from the Roman occupation times and were discovered when the bank was being built. Cool!
Yep… it’s the famous Tower Bridge! This picture was taken from the re-built London Bridge.
The original London Bridge (is falling down, falling down, etc…), remember, was bought and moved, stone by stone, to Arizona.
Fools… they thought that they were buying Tower Bridge!!
Exhausted, we “squeeze” our way back to Waterloo Station, gather our luggage, and take an “authentic” London cab to Houston Station to meet John, Marianne, and Mark.
And now… it’s time to say goodbye to Julian and head out on the next phase of this wonderful second “English Adventure”!!!
An overnight sleeper train is waiting to take us all to Scotland! Read on for more!!
