UK09: Day 1 - London

(Note: check out the accompanying photo album for more pics and map!)

My flight got into London about an hour late (from delays in Philly - go figure.), but it was a bright, sunny morning, approximately 10am local time. (so... 5am EST) I had a rough plan for what to see, so to start things off I caught the tube to South Kensington. I didn't spend a ton of time here. There was the Museum of Science and the Natural History museum, both of which were interesting, but I would put them a notch or two below their respective Smithsonians in DC. Perhaps it's national pride, or perhaps I was tired enough to make them less interesting, but they definitely seemed smaller and less impressive.

BMW in the London Science Museum. Perhaps I should trade mine in for one of these?

So, I hopped back onto the tube and popped up right near the Tower of London. Right off the bat, the first thing that hit me was that London had a lot of stone and a lot of glass. An odd combination, but the modern and the historical were all intermingled in a way that I'm sure is unique in some way to London. Anyhow, the tower was cool. It used to be a fortress, and the walls and moats (including the River Thames on one side) were still intact, so one could imagine the defenses. Tower bridge was, of course, right nearby, and a tall boat handily came by at just the right time to watch it in action.

Many layers of the Tower of London, from many different eras.

Tower Bridge.

Glass and stone: the materials of London

From there, I made my way on foot along the Thames, with the eventual goal of the Parliament building. There are paths along both sides of the Thames through here, weaving around and between the buildings. I deviated a few blocks north to check out St. Pauls cathedral, which is supposedly one of the largest in the world. Then, accross the Millenium footbridge and along the other side. The London Eye is probably the big attraction over here. It is a 443 foot tall ferris wheel cantilevered out over the Thames. Quite large and impressive, and I'm sure the view was stunning, but the line was long enough I decided my time (and pounds) would be better spent elsewhere.

It was getting on towards late afternoon by now, so I headed across the river from the eye to the Parliament buildings. Big Ben was there, dutiful proclaiming every quarter hour, and the House of Commons had some very intricate stonework. Westminster Abbey was a block away, but unfortunately they had just closed for the day, so I didn't get to go in. Still, the outside was quite impressive.

Big Ben. Still there, still chiming!

From there, I worked my way up through St. James Park to Buckingham Palace. Buckingham Palace is not too impressive from the outside... its just a big, kinda nice looking building. From what I've gathered, it is incredibly opulent inside, but that didn't matter to me much. Absolutely no chance of getting in. There was a dutiful guard standing stock still in the little booth though. Poor guy. Must be a very, very boring job.

St. James Park

By now it was getting on into the evening, but I had a bit more time to kill. So I wandered up to Hyde park. Along the way I was met with a rather pleasant surprise to London. I had been seeing nice cars all day, but walking up to one of the main intersections behind the palace, wham. Lamborghini drives by. 30 seconds later, Ferrari. Seeing a pattern, I stopped and watched the intersection for a while, and it was officially, by far, the most exotics I've seen in one place. Every cycle of the light it seemed there was an Italian exotic, or german supercar, or British beauty. I stopped counting after a while, but we're talking maybe 20 exotic sports cars in as many minutes. Even a Mercedes Benz SLR Mclaren, of which only a couple thousand were ever made worldwide! (I've seen one before, but in Mercedes' own museum in Stuttgart! (see here) The craziest thing is that these people drive them full out in London traffic!! (well, everyone drives full out in London traffic, but these are in kind of a different performance league than the average traffic!)

I finally tired of car watching and worked my way into Hyde park to watch the sunset. Nothing too interesting. No clouds, just the London smog to add color to it. As it got on towards dark, I headed towards the Victoria Bus station, to continue on my journey up to Scotland. My impressions of London are quite positive. It was a beautiful day, and the city was quite unique and photogenic, and of course there was no shortage of stuff to see. I scraped the top surface of what to do there, but I'm sure there are many, many hidden gems all around the city. The toughest part was getting used to everyone driving on the wrong side of the road! There's no such thing as a standard intersection in London, either, so every time crossing a street I just had to look both ways about three times each to convince myself it was safe!!