We woke up ready for our first full day of exploring London. We had landed at one of the London airports 35 days ago, but went directly on to our first destination, Bath. We took the guidebook recommendation to not deal with London on jet lag, but come back to it at the end of our trip, which is what we are doing. We are now at the time in every trip where we can see the end from here. We fly home in less than a week. So now, on to London to soak in as much as we can.
Oh goodness, London! We slept in a bit. Had a nice breakfast and chat with one of our hosts and then we packed up to head off for our initial sightseeing.
We picked up some sandwiches at the local grocery for lunch. We had come to appreciate the "meal deal" where you could get a sandwich and yoghurt of chips and a drink all for about $4-5. Then we took on our train to Victoria in the city, an easy 10 minute ride. We got off there and then we began walking in London. We had a very nice walk, eventually going by the back of Buckingham Palace up to several of the lovely parks : Hyde Park, Green Park, and Saint James's Park. It was a lovely day, actually our first hot day on the trip with the temperature being about 82°. It was fun to stroll through the parks and marvel at green everything was. There were lots of birds that we saw and including swans, some kind of ducks and geese, and surprise, pelicans! Apparently, the original pelicans were a gift here from Russia, and there’s a long history of having pelicans in the Royal Parks.
We looked for a bench which was rather difficult to nab. Patti finally ran and grabbed an empty one. And we sat an half hour lunch, and people watched. We also listened to a recording of tour guide Rick Steves walking us through the Westminster part of the city. It was a lovely afternoon to be enjoying our time.
Eventually, we walked over and saw the front of Buckingham Palace as well as the Queen Victoria monument. We learned that the Palace is known as the most expensive property in the world. We had decided to skip the lines and crowd watching the changing guards. But even with fewer crowds, the people were crowded in this area. It was interesting to think of the royal family and all the things that have happened there.
Want to Trafalgar Square and decided to stop at the National Portrait Gallery. We had originally not planned to do that on our first afternoon, but we were right there. What a lucky choice. They were celebrating 200 years since they had opened and their collection was just shining.
It was rather overwhelming walking through so many different galleries, but we were thrilled, especially to see, a whole room full of Rembrandts. This is the most we had seen besides in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. These pictures with his use of light are spectacular. It never looks like the light is shining on the faces, but somehow the light is coming out of the faces. We adored these.
We also saw a lot of wonderful Impressionist art. It was fun to do that having so recently seen the beautiful show of the women Impressionists in Dublin. However, it was disappointing to see that there were almost no paintings done by an impression. Those women are still not getting their due. We saw so many other beautiful paintings and then eventually decided we were full. There’s only so much beauty one can soaking in an afternoon.
We wandered back along. We went saw the site of Westminster. It was fun to see the police guarding number 10 Downing Street where the Prime Minister lives. Their new Prime Minister has now moved in there. We had the chance to see big Paramount, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey. All of those iconic sites and there we were.
But, both of us felt like our feet were really getting tired and we decided rather than to push on, we would walk back to the train station and take the subway back. When we got back to our Airbnb, having stopped and picked up some nice salmon and veggies to cook from the grocery store-time to make some dinner. We had a chance to check our phones to see how far we had walked and we had both walked over 20,000 steps around nine or 10 miles, so no wonder our feet were tired. Time for some relaxing, Patti took a nap while Dick work on photos, and then some dinner. It was a long and good day soaking in as much as we could.
We ended the night trying to go through and figure out the logistics for our day tomorrow. First off, to go on a tour of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, and later on to see the ABBA experience. We were originally supposed to go on a Harry Potter sites tour, which was canceled. So we had to do a little bit of regrouping. The logistic planning part of independent traveling sometimes gets tiring. After trying many different solutions, we came up with a good basic plan for the next day and went off to bed.
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