2017-03-30 Trip Day 4

Day 4, March 30

London

Entertainment for today - waiting for a room to be ready at our hotel.  We arrived in London about 6:00 am and the hotel was very close to Heathrow.  Of course, no room available for several hours.

Decided to fill in the rest of the day by travelling into central London by bus - slow, but if you travel by train, you are mostly underground and see nothing.  The recommendation from Justen was that we should at least see the Crown Jewels, so back to Google Maps and choose a set of bus routes that will get us to Westminster Bridge and then we can travel by River Bus (ferry) to the Tower.

Gaye chose to rest up at the hotel.

Scenes on the way

Will we fit under that bridge?  (We did)

One of those (that?) semi-circular townhouse collection that featured in Oliver.

Hyde Park - huge!

Australian War memorial

What the ...?  I travel half way round the world and this is the only glimpse I get of Westminster Cathedral??

Floral Tribute - it's only a few days since the terrorist action on Westminster Bridge

Well, we made it to Westminster Bridge.  Now "we" get the idea that we can walk around the banks of the Thames to the Tower ("we" = no names, no libel suit).

Well, we got to Southwark Bridge and decided our little legs had reached their limit - at least we could see Tower Bridge.  What, you can't see it?

Just as well I bought a camera with zoom, then.

This one for Aaron, they look after cyclists here - note the kurbed off bicycle lane.

So what to do now?  No access to Google Maps here (no data on the plan I got to have cheap roaming costs during the trip).  Cross the river and look for a bus stop.  Good thing about London is that they provide excellent route and timing information at most bus stops.  We found a bus to Marble arch and knew we could catch a bus home from there.

This trip was the most unexpected surprise - we travelled along The Strand, Regent Street, Park Lane, through Trafalgar Square and many other famous London landmark addresses, some famous from the Monopoly board and others just well known.  What a delight.

Cute gardens outside pubs caught our eyes.

Finally got back to our hotel about 7:00 pm.  Fortunately Gaye had not decided to call the police yet!  We really appreciated our dinner.  We were also very excited to hear on the news that London had put on the warmest day in six years for us.