London June 11-13, 2003

The primary purpose of staying in London was to get out of an airplane and get our heads into local time frame.  (Many of these pictures are available in larger downloadable form on the Webshots site.)

So we got out of our plane and caught the tube downtown.  I'd found a hotel in Kensington at a reasonable (London definition of course) price that was near the tube.  It was a very pleasant hotel, but the room was definitely old London (translate that as small)

My philosophy of getting on local time is to do "something" that keeps you moving and awake till normal time for bed.  So after checking in, we headed down to the Thames to take their walking tour (in our hotel guidebook).  Here's the beginning of the tour, right by parliament and Big Ben.   They're doing construction on the bridge, so it was a challenge to get this view, but once we got there, it was worth the effort.

This is a busy area of the river, so there are lots of boats to see and in the distance you can also see St. Paul's.  Distances are deceiving however, we did not walk as far as the guidebook suggested we should proceed before legs and feet gave out.

We did stop at the newly reconstructed Globe theater and took their tour.  We had a few minutes to look at the exhibits, but were more interested in sitting than in walking at this point.  The tour was very informative and I believe we all enjoyed learning more about how things were done then and now.  (For example, Shakespeare used all male casts - now they have an all male cast as well as an all female cast.  Note that the person's sex has nothing to do with the sex of the part they are playing.)

We did go over to the St. Paul's area for lunch and a tour of the church, but it's all under construction in preparation for their 300th anniversary, so we don't have any pictures.  Went back to the hotel, did some unpacking, looking around, then had dinner.

After dinner we went back down to the center of town.  The picture to the right is Piccadilly Circus (remember that a "circus" in British is a "circle" in American).  As you can see, it's a London translation of Times Square.  We were back in this area Friday, walked right straight up that street in the front to find the Prince Edward Theater where we saw Mamma Mia.

We then did Trafalgar Square, took the tube to St. James' park, and walked up to Buckingham palace.  I think James was very impressed with the palace, but I'd guess he was more impressed with the guards in their bearskin caps.

Thursday we took a bus tour to Stratford and Warwick.  I'll cover that in a separate page, and continue the London pictures here.

Friday was a "pick up" day - do that stuff that hadn't gotten done that needed doing.  So, once more, we were on the tube - this time to the Tower of London.  Again, there's construction in the area, so getting from the tube station to the front gate was different than before, but if you followed the signs, it really was easy.  As you can see, the line to start the tour wasn't very long and the insides were not overly crowded.

James very much enjoyed the stories the guide told us (in reality, so did we), especially the details of bringing people through the traitor's gate directly from the Thames (you no longer can do that, but as you can see, they do have it water filled)

After we finished the tower tour, we decided to take one of the Thames tours.  Probably the best part of the tour is right at the beginning where you get a very dramatic shot of the Tower Bridge (which the guy in Arizona thought he was buying when he bought London Bridge).  The last time I took one of these tours, it was a "little" boat.  As you can see from the photo on the left, that is no longer true.

Friday evening, we got an early dinner and went back to Piccadilly Circus, walked up to the Prince Edward theater where Mamma Mia is playing.  We got there early (not knowing where we were going, we were conservative on dinner and travel time), so stood around and took in the sites of Soho.  A very social area, and at 8PM, not dangerous, but decidingly different.

When I told James this was music of the '70s, he was polite, but not excited.  If you don't know the show, it's a collection of Abba music wrapped around a fun plot.  When we were done, James was in a great mood and wanted us to buy the CD for him (£19.95, so we suggested he wait till we were home (you can get it from Amazon for $13.80 plus shipping)), so I guess we picked well.