Monday: Considering the “See London in Two Days” itinerary told us to “get our walking boots ready” for today, we should have guessed how much we would be walking, but it turned out to be sooooo much more than I imagined. We walked up and down both sides of the Thames and by the end of the day we all thought our feet were going to fall off!
– We started at the Temple Church which was built in the 12th and 13th centuries for the Knights Templar (yep, think the Da Vinci Code). It was pretty interesting to look around and the stained glass in there was beautiful.
– We walked up Fleet Street to St. Paul’s Cathedral. We walked all around the nave, checking out all the beautiful mosaics on the ceiling and then headed up to the Whispering Gallery (here if you sit on opposite sides of the dome you can whisper and the person on the other side can hear you!) and then up to the Golden Gallery (for a total of 1,161 steps (per the brochure). It was pretty windy up top but we had a great view of the city! Then we headed down to the crypt where we saw the tombs of Wellington, Christopher Wren (the architect of the church), and Nelson.
– Next we headed to the Tower of London (built by William the Conqueror in the 11th century) to check out the White Tower (where Morgan and Stephen got to check out swords and suits of armor), the Jewel House (where the crown jewels are), Beauchamp Tower, and the Tower Green (where the aristocratic prisoners were beheaded- including a few of Henry VIII’s wives).
– From there we walked across the Tower Bridge (from here you can see City Hall and the HMS Belfast) and prepared to walk aaallllll the way back down the other side of the bank to the London Eye.
– While walking down the far side of the river we passed the Globe Theater (think Shakespeare) and the Tate Modern. We had hoped to stop by the Tate, but we were trying to make it to the London Eye as quickly as possible so we’d have time to ride it before we had to get ready for dinner and a show that night. I think it took about 2.5 hours of walking (pretty quickly) to get from the Tower Bridge down to the London Eye. By the time we got there it was about 4:30 and we needed to be back to the hotel by 5:30 to get ready for dinner. So, sadly the line was too long for us to wait for the ride and have time to make it to dinner before the show (and we weren’t willing to pay an extra $10 on top of the $40 it already cost for a regular ticket). So we decided to head on back so we could have a relaxing dinner and enjoy the show (about this time it started to rain on us, but thankfully .
– We ate dinner at an “American” themed restaurant that had drink and meal specials on Monday nights.. so Morgan got to have a nice big steak (that is really hard to find here in Germany for a decent price). Then we walked on up to The Ambassador where Stomp was playing. We all really enjoyed the show! It was funny, entertaining, and wasn’t crazy expensive. They played one set on metal kitchen sinks that I really liked and Morgan’s favorite was one where they played a song with lighters (I know, I can’t describe it very well, but it was a great show!).
Tuesday we grabbed breakfast at a place between our hotel and Kings Cross Station called 06 St. Chad’s Place – and it was amazing! I would definitely recommend it! Then we started the long trip home (Kings Cross to Heathrow, Heathrow to Amsterdam, and then Amsterdam to several different stops in the Netherlands and Germany to get home by train). But we did get to pick up some American and Dutch goodies before leaving Amsterdam so now we have some Mac and cheese and Hershey’s syrup to enjoy!