Cruising the Thames (London part 5 of 9)

The Thames doesn't rhyme with James. I learned that from a Paula Danziger book when I was like 10. (On a side note, the family in that set of books is awesome: the parents drag their kids on trips and set them on scavenger hunts to find places of interest. Totally doing that to my hypothetical future children.) Anyway, as you are probably aware, the Thames is the big river that flows through London, and as with all Roman/Medieval cities, the reason for putting a city there in the first place. My hop-on-hop-off bus tour included rides on the City Cruises boats, so I took the boat from the Westminster Dock and up to the Tower of London. So here's some of what I saw.

If it hadn't been so overcast, this would totally win hands down as the coolest shot of the London Eye I got. But the endless sea of gray drops it down below a prettier shot with blue skies :)

This is the OXO building. It's not very exciting in and of itself, but I totally get a kick out of loopholes. See, anything along the Thames isn't allowed to put up big corporate advertising signs. So what did Oxo do? They built windows on the tower that just happen to be shaped into two O's and an X. Clever buggers.

This is the Tate Modern (which I'm kind of bummed I didn't get a chance to go to, but you can't do everything!). It is housed in an old power plant (hence the _really_ attractive (not) concrete construction) and houses, in addition to all kinds of whack-a-doodle modern art that I'm just not "cultured" enough to appreciate, a glorious collection of Impressionist works. And I love me some Monet.

And here's the reconstruction, complete with thatched roof, of Shakespeare's Globe theatre. While they've taken away some of the seating & standing room that would have existed in Shakespeare's day (those pesky fire codes don'tcha know), it is supposed to be quite authentic- to the point of encouraging attendees to interact with the players, walk around, mingle, eat, etc. They didn't have a play running while I was there (not _quite_ tourist season) so I didn't go out there, but it sounds like a rocking good time.

Between 1577 and 1580, Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe on his ship the Golden Hinde. This here is a reconstruction of that ship (think the Mayflower II), handcrafted by traditional methods and sailed around the world (and then some). It now has accumulated enough "mileage" to have circumnavigated the globe 5 times. Now it's more or less permanently docked here and serves as a living history site where British school children can dress up like sailors and learn about navigating and the voyages of discovery.

We tempted fate, but it didn't fall down. The bridge before this incarnation was completed in the early 1900s and proved insufficient for modern traffic. An effort to widen the bridge proved unsuccessful (as the whole thing started sinking), so the Brits sold the bridge to an American in the 1960s. Urban legend holds the the buyer thought he was getting Tower Bridge (which to be fair is often called London Bridge), but he denied it. But then wouldn't you if you'd been that dumb? So now you can go see it in Arizona, where it apparently hangs out near a Tudor period shopping mall. I don't think I'd want to buy a whole lot of Tudor goods, but maybe that's just me.

Here we have the HMS Belfast. She saw action in World War II (including in Operation Overlord and the D-Day landings in Normandy) and in Korea, and now serves as a museum ship as part of the Imperial War Museum.

Tower Bridge. Isn't it pretty? It was built to mimic & blend in with the Tower of London, which you could admire to your left from where I took this picture :) The lower level is a functioning suspension bridge, although it only opens up about once a week nowadays, while the upper level is now an tourist attraction, the Tower Bridge Exhibition. For a modest fee you can poke around a dopey museum about the bridge and then walk across the upper walkway. It used to be closed to the public because too many people tried to commit suicide from there, but it has since been enclosed with windows, plus apparently they've decided that you're less likely to do that if you have to pay for the privilege. They're in the midst of giving the bridge a face lift & paint job before the beginning of the 2012 Olympics in London, but I think they expect most of the work to be done next year.

I think maybe Trafalgar Square will be up next. But we'll see :)