Kicking off the new year in London...

After a nice Christmas at home, we headed off to London last Thursday for a fun trip to start the new year on a good note. We arrived the morning of New Year's Eve and spent the afternoon sleeping off the jet lag before the evening festivities. After dinner, we took a rather circuitous route to our viewing location on the Waterloo Bridge to watch the fireworks overlooking the Thames River with the London Eye and Big Ben as the backdrop. The bridges were being progressively closed as they filled up with crowds. The whole experience reminded us a lot of when we were in Paris for Bastille Day over the summer. As we did then, we had to walk back to our hotel in the northern part of the West End after the fireworks were over because of closings and congestion on the subway. It was a long, cold walk, but we certainly weren't alone in it.

Happy New Year!

Not surprisingly, we slept in on Saturday morning, ahem afternoon. We had our first British meal of fish and chips for lunch then we spent a couple of hours touring St. Paul's Cathedral with an informative audio guide that was provided. Of course K wanted to head to the top, so we stopped first at the Whispering Gallery in the interior of the dome then continued on in the narrow, winding staircase to the Stone Gallery for a panoramic view of the city on a cloudy, dreary day. After our tour, we stayed for the evening prayer service.

View of Millenium Bridge leading to the Tate with Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to the left

Leaving St. Paul's

 

Next up was a walk across the Millenium Bridge for a couple of hours checking out the art at the Tate Modern followed by dinner on the top floor of the museum with a beautiful view of the Thames and St. Paul's dominating the night skyline.

No surprise that this was the Andy Warhol room, as it was covered with this cow wallpaper!

 

We then quickly headed over to the Tower of London to witness the ceremonial locking-up of the Tower by the Yeoman Warders. It is a nightly ritual that has occurred without fail since the 1300's. It is limited to 80 guests per night, and tickets must be requested well in advance to attend.

Still jetlagged, I wasn't too eager to spend Sunday with K at the British Museum, but that's what we did...for 6 hours and still didn't even come close to seeing everything in the 2.5 miles of galleries! The British Museum is undoubtedly one of the most comprehensive collections of art and artifacts in the world. It really provides a thorough view of the history of the world. Needless to say, K was in hog heaven taking it all in. A few of the notable highlights in the museum are the Rosetta Stone from Egypt and the Parthenon Sculptures from Athens.

Rosetta Stone

We were both museumed out by the end of the day, but did manage to enjoy a nice meal in Covent Garden that evening.

Monday was another full distinctly British day. We started with watching the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, along with tons of other folks.

Another lunch of fish and chips was followed by an afternoon at Westminster Abbey. Again, we had a nice tour of the building thanks to the provided audio guide (narrated by Jeremy Irons, no less). It was surprising to see so many royals and others entombed on the main floor of the Abbey. In addition to the royal tombs, the Abbey contains the tombs of scientists such as Newton and Darwin as well as the famous Poet's Corner, where several notable writers are buried or memorialized, including Chaucer, Dickens, Tennyson, and Browning.

Westminster Abbey

After we left the Abbey, we made the short walk over to the Houses of Parliament (which were not in session) and Big Ben in time to hear the famous clock chime.

We then changed hotels that evening to stay in Kensington for our last few nights.

On Tuesday, K and I went our separate ways so that he could spend the day at the National Gallery while I did some window shopping starting with Harrod's.

Harrod's

We met up in the evening for dinner in Notting Hill.

Wednesday was a day where we wished we had more time. We spent the morning into the early afternoon at the Tower of London. I think we were caught off guard by just how much there was to see there. After an entertaining Beefeater tour, we then checked out the "House of Bling" where the Crown Jewels are kept and viewed from a moving walkway. We continued our tour of the grounds, but weren't able to see everything that we wanted to before we needed to leave to make our next stop.

Our personal Beefeater, Chris, who had a fascination with executions!

The site of six executions within the Tower. The rest were carried out in public just outside on Tower Hill.

The resident 6 ravens of the Tower. The legend is that the monarchy will fall if the ravens leave the Tower.

King Henry VIII's armor. He was a big boy!

Tower Bridge

My one must-do item for this trip was to visit Freud's home in northern London. And, yes, the famous couch is there (although no pictures allowed).

Freud's home in London at 20 Maresfield Gardens. The Anna Freud Center which she helped create is just down the street.

We finished off our day with "The Woman in Black" at the Fortune Theater, which has been playing for 21 years in the West End! It was a suspenseful, scary drama that was even more so from our seats in the second row in the center of the stage.

A few general observations from our trip:

-London is expensive! I didn't always take the time to get an accurate view of how much I was spending with the currency conversion (1 Pound = 1.6 U.S. Dollars, approximately). I am thankful though that my business has been doing well enough that I was able to foot the bill for nearly all of our expenses there. One of the big news stories while we were there involved the VAT increase from 17.5% to a whopping 20%! So, it's just going to get even more expensive to visit there. One good thing to note is that most of the museums are free (not the historical buildings though).

-We made this trip during the off-peak season for tourists. This had some advantages and disadvantages. We never had to wait in line to visit anyplace. This was in stark contrast to my previous visit there during the summer months and our experience in Paris last summer. The big downside was the weather - it was cold and dreary, but not enough to take away from our experience too much.

- Like most major metropolitan cities, the public transportation there is comprehensive and easy to use.

- K: The history contained within the city is incredible. From its beginnings as a Roman city to the heart of England and later the British empire, it has been the center of the English-speaking world for over 1000 years. It really puts things in perspective as an American with 200-300 years of your country's history to hear details about and see artifacts from hundreds of years ago that are still understood, preserved and celebrated today.