I was supposed to fly out to Istanbul on Saturday, but what with the volcanic ash cloud hovering over Europe, air travel has been severely disrupted, and thus I am back at York. At least I got to enjoy three days in London, which I absolutely love. Most of my fellow Yorkites seem to regard London either with moderate dislike or outright hatred, but I thought it was a fantastic city. But granted, I'm completely a city person. Give me mass transit, loads of ethnic food options, plenty of museums and sights to see and things to do and I'm set. I almost wish I'd gone to one of the schools I got into in London instead of York, but York has a special place in my heart too.
Its hard to even try to cover some place like London in one post, so I'm not even going to try. For this post, I thought I'd do a quick overview of what I got up to while I was away and then do several posts on specific sites in order to make it more manageable to write about.
The city of London proper is actually quite small- only about 1 square mile and directly correlates to the Roman city of Londinium. Most of what we think of as "London" is technically part of either the city of Westminster or surrounding villages that have conglomerated into the giant sprawl of modern Greater London. Today the ancient city of London is missing it's medieval walls but you can still tell when you are entering or leaving the city by these guys:
Dragons are the symbol of London and will mark the transition into London proper in some form or another along all road access points. I actually stayed in Westminster, in a district called Belgravia. The area was/is largely owned by the Grosvenor family, the head of which holds the title of Viscount Belgrave (among others) and this is where the district's name derives from. The Grosvenors mandate that the buildings there continue to be painted "magnolia" and must be repainted every 10 years and washed every 5 to keep them as pretty as they are.
It isn't the most happening part of London, but I thought it was quite a nice area to be able to go "home" to. Plus, within easy walking distance to Buckingham Palace and Victoria Station, so easy tube and rail connections. The area is dotted with hotels and embassies, and continues to be a fashionable neighborhood for the well-to-do. I saw Sean Connery's house, but apparently he doesn't actually stay there much, and Margaret Thatcher lives there; you can find her house by finding the police officer who stands guard outside.
While I was in London, I was determined to see/do as much as humanly possible, considering most touristy things close around 5 or 6. So I did one of those awfully touristy hop-on-hop-off bus tour things, and y'know, I think I really got my money's worth out of it. I got to see a lot of London riding around on it that I wouldn't have if I had just taken to tube back and forth to all the places I wanted to go, plus I got inspired by the commentary/live tour guide on the buses for additional places to check out that weren't on my radar. But for now, let's focus on the touristy things.
The British Library- an absolute must for history/literature enthusiasts. While it functions much like our own Library of Congress in that it has copies of EVERYTHING, it also has a neat room full of the "treasures of the British Library" on display. Admission is free (yay!) and they have all kinds of cool things, from Shakespeare, to the Lindisfarne Gospels, and the only manuscript of Beowulf.
And how about the British Museum? Issues of cultural heritage and looting (coughElginMarblescough) and whatnot aside, the British Museum is incredibly impressive. Collecting things from around the world while you're a huge imperial power gets you an awesome national museum. This totally deserves it's own post, so more on this later. But just wow.
Buckingham Palace: It is only open to visitors in August and September while the Queen is away at her summer palace in Scotland, but fair warning that the Queen charges an arm and a leg to view her palatial residence.
The London Eye: London's most-visited tourist attraction. The London Eye was built in 1999 for the Millennium and was only meant to last for 5 years. It has since had its lease renewed for another 25 years, so it'll be sticking around for awhile (I mean come on, its London's biggest money maker, of course it is sticking around!). The London Eye is Europe's largest ferris wheel, but it has been surpassed as the tallest in the world by two wheels in Asia. The current record holder is the Singapore Flyer. Each capsule on the wheel can hold 25 passangers and one loop around lasts 30 minutes. In case you were wondering, you can in fact get married on the London Eye, provided you want 25 or fewer guests present and can get the thing done in ~25 minutes. But they recommend you hold the reception elsewhere (no toilet facilities + lots of alcohol = not a pretty picture). This will also cost you an arm and a leg (about 18 pounds), but is actually open pretty late, so you can chose to see the panorama of London during the day or lit up at night.
St Paul's Cathedral: Charles & Diana broke with royal tradition and got married here, instead of Westminster Abbey, the traditional site of all things ceremonial and royal. It is a gorgeous cathedral, although only about 300 years old, which is fairly young for a great European cathedral and was designed by Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of 1666 destroyed most of London. Unfortunately, this is another one that does not allow photos inside, which is a shame. But I went and paid my respects to Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington in the crypts and then climbed up 259 steps to the Whispering Gallery, then up 119 steps to the Stone Gallery, which circles the exterior of the bottom of the dome, and then up 152 steps to the Golden Gallery, along the top of the dome. While the steps up to the Whispering Gallery aren't bad- pretty wide and shallow until the last ten or so which are standard thin passage stone steps. But up to the Stone Gallery it is all twisting narrow stairways that even I had to duck down in on the way down. And to the Golden Gallery? Up metal scaffolding set up in the giant cavern of the dome. The views are pretty good, but I don't know that there's much difference between the view from the Stone & Golden Galleries.
My favorite, the Tower of London! So many pictures and stories to tell about this castle, so I'm not even going to get into it here.
Trafalgar Square: An awesome (and pigeon-free!) place to hang out and enjoy the sunshine and people watch.
Westminster: I'm kind of combining several things here. The remains of Westminster Palace are now the Houses of Parliament (pictured). Big Ben hangs in a tower of the Palace and chimes out the quarter hours. Westminster Abbey is right across the street, while 10 Downing Street is just down the road.
So there are some highlights of my trip. Much much more to come on both these and other sights. But I'll leave with this thought: The beauty of traveling alone (besides the obvious perk of not having to deal with other people and compromise on what to see and do) is that you meet really awesome other people! Since I was traveling by myself, I elected to stay in an all-girl room and got to meet some really great girls also traveling by themselves which made for instant friends. It takes a certain kind of adventurous girl with a bit of a responsible side to travel alone AND chose to pay 1 pound more per night to stay in an all-girl room instead of a co-ed one, so we all had at least that much in common, despite the fact that we hailed from the US, Italy, Belgium, Australia and New Zealand. This also serves as my photographic proof that I got sunburned in London on an overcast day.
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