London Round Deux



London Round Deux:

 

On my second trip to London for work, I spent another weekend enjoying the sites.  This time the focus was more on traditional tourist sites than seeing all of the West End in a weekend.  I also had a travel buddy this time...a friend from Houston was in town for work as well, so I had someone else to consult with about what to see and how to get there.  It was awesome!



 

View from hotel of the London Eye.  This time I stayed on Trafalgar Square, which was great for sight seeing quickly. 

 

 

Before I met my friend from his overnight flight, I headed to Convent Garden to see the Christmas decorations.  It was really awesome.  I also wandered through the market with it's arts and crafts displays.  There was some really neat stuff that I could have spent money on, but wanted to save for the sites later on.

 

 

First up was the Tower of London, which we did a Beefeater tour of.  The Beefeater tour was included in admission and very nicely done.  It was part history tour, part comedy tour.  The kids loved it and there were some chuckles had by all.  Overall though, the Tower of London was a lot more dark and gloomy than I thought it would be.  I guess I forgot about all of the death that occurred there.  The stories behind Henry the VIII were the best and seeing where Anne Boyeln was buried was neat as well.  The tour lasted about an hour and was well worth it.

 

 

The bridge was really neat to see - we didn't walk over to it but we got the appropriate photo opps.  We then walked the Tower wall and found a few of the torture exhibits and prision guard exhibits as well:

Silly things you do on the Tower wall.

 

We also saw the crown jewels, which I had heard were a tad disappointing so I went in with low expectations.  It turned out to be really neat, the jewels were just gorgeous and flashy as they should be.  You can't take pictures in there, which is probably a good thing because I would have filled up a whole memory stick with them.

 

After that, we headed to Picadilly Circus, where I had my first proper fish and chips, which was great.  The season was definitely in full swing on the circus...carolers, lights, people everywhere.  After we had lunch, we left the madness and headed to the Whitehall area for Churchill's War Rooms.

 

This was the best war museum I've seen in Europe, including the Paris Military museum and Dutch Resistance museum.  It's a standout in my mind and probably the best thing I've seen in London to date.  The museum preserves the rooms that Churchill used for his War Cabinet during the height of WWII, including the map rooms and his sleeping quarters pictured above.  It also has a huge modern exhibit on Churchill's life and the history of the war from the British perspective.  It's classy, well documented and a fair representation of the period of time.  I could spend a full day in there just reading through the exhibits.  It also comes with a really well done audio guide for each of the rooms you can view.  It's almost like stepping back into the 1940s in those hall ways.

 

After the war rooms, we walked down the mall to Buckingham and I got another shot of the castle:

From there it was on to Hyde Park, which I didn't do last time:

Hyde Park had their winter wonderland set up for Christmas, complete with this ice rink, which we stayed to watch the skaters for a bit.  The park was PACKED with people, but overall the atmosphere was great.  I felt like the holiday season was in full swing.

 

After that, we took a brief rest to freshen up for dinner.  We had Indian food at an RS recommended place near Convent Garden.  It was great!  Indian food is becoming my favorite, outside of Tex Mex.

 

The next morning, we met for a full English breakfast at a local pub, including baked beans, which seems weird, but it was good.  Then we caught the tube and headed to the British Museum:

 

The museum is kind of like looking through a pawn shop of all of the items the British have stolen over the years.  It's one big encyclopedia Brittanica in 3-D.  We hit the highlights, including the Rosetta Stone, Egyptian mummies, African and Japanese art, and the pieces from the Parthenon.  The best part for me was the architecture of the rooms.  Each room was slightly grander than the next. 

 

After that, we wandered back through Oxford and Regent street to see the lights and then it was time for me to catch my flight out of London City.  I decided to take the tube again, despite having a bag.  It turned out better than when I came in on Friday - that was utter madness trying to get a bag through the lines at the tube.  Much better on a Sunday.  The train though was shut at my tube/rail departure, so I thought for sure I would have to grab a cab from there.  However, a nice tube employee pointed me to the free bus connecting me to the Docklands Rail at another station.  So I hopped on that double decker bus (first one for me) and was driven past the Tower of London in style:

 

 

At the DLR station, I caught the right train (got on the wrong one first, but was able to get off before it took off).  City airport was uneventful.  I actually think it might be easier to get from Heathrow to the city, but the security lines and the ease of use with City is so much better.  Customs took me about 5 minutes at City as opposed to the 30+ minutes it takes me at Heathrow. 

 

Then I snapped these shots as we were taking off....I think this is Olympic stadium!

 

Overall, a great trip which was made better by having a travel buddy!  I could get used to that (hint, hint!!!).