On Tuesday we continued our sightseeing of London, and headed out to see the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge.\u00a0 We took the Circle line to the Tower Hill station, and then walked a little ways to the Tower of London.\u00a0 We arrived a bit early so we decided to walk across the Tower Bridge and explore the other side of the river.\u00a0 We were still full from dinner the previous night, so we decided to skip breakfast, and do a lot of walking instead.<\/p>\n
The Tower Bridge was interesting for me to walk across, since I had somehow missed the experience the last time I was in London.\u00a0 The weather was clear and sunny, and we were treated to beautiful views of the London skyline.\u00a0 You could really appreciate the unusual architecture that is common in the downtown area – very different from Kobe. Back at the Tower of London we were able to see red ceramic poppies being \u201cplanted\u201d around and on the walls of the tower and in the dry moat area.\u00a0 They were an artistic exhibit meant to symbolize all the blood that had run through the tower through history.\u00a0 Pretty heavy.<\/p>\n
We were able to pick up our tickets easily enough, but the entrance to the Tower had apparently changed recently, and we had to walk almost all the way around following guides to another entrance.\u00a0 Once there it was easy enough to get in, and we set about exploring all the museums and exhibits.\u00a0 Again, our relatively early start paid off and we could look around with very few tourists getting in our way.\u00a0 The busiest section was the area were we could view the crown jewels close up, but for some reason they weren\u2019t as striking to me this time around.\u00a0 Kuniko wasn\u2019t so impressed either.\u00a0 But overall the visit was interesting, and I think we were both glad we came.<\/p>\n
On the way out we shyly asked a Beefeater for a picture, and he politely said yes.\u00a0 I think 90% of his job is posing for pictures with tourists, so it wasn\u2019t really unusual for him.\u00a0 Thanks, Beefeater guy!<\/p>\n
Our next stop was Notting Hill.\u00a0 Kuniko was really interested in exploring the neighborhood.\u00a0 I remember going there years ago, but the day I was there everything was closed. \u00a0This time everything was quite open, and we had fun poking through the unusual shops and avoiding the really touristy ones.\u00a0 I had fun looking around in a spice store, and Kuniko led us to various famous spots from the Hugh Grant\/Julia Roberts movie \u201cNotting Hill\u201d.\u00a0 We even went into the bookstore that was in the movie, and it was a little weird to be in there considering I\u2019d seen the scene once or twice on DVD – kind of a reality meets Hollywood moment.<\/p>\n
Moving on from Notting Hill we took the underground to Marble Arch station.\u00a0 Back in 2000, I stayed at a hotel near this station with my dad and uncle, and it was nice way to bring back the memories and walk around the Marble Arch itself.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t exactly find the hotel by looking around, so I think it either went of business or I am mis-remembering the exact location.\u00a0 Both of these are equally possible.<\/p>\n
We continued down the main street, past lots of shopping areas and brand stores, and then made a random right turn and came across a pub for lunch.\u00a0 Kuniko had venison pie, I had fish and chips, and we washed it all down with several beers.\u00a0 Kuniko really liked the Portabello Ale that was common in London pubs – I think it was her favorite beer during the stay.\u00a0 I tried so many beers I can\u2019t remember a particular favorite, but I do know I drank way more stouts than I usually do.<\/p>\n
While we were inside the pub the weather outside changed to cloudy and windy, but the temperature remained very comfortable.\u00a0 I think this was the first time that we saw clouds during our London stay – so I guess we were lucky to enjoy very unusual weather (to me).<\/p>\n
Now that we were full of calories we decided to get some exercise by walking from the pub all the way to Leicester Square, walking at top speed and dodging tourists as we went.\u00a0 By now there were a startling amount of tourists walking around, so it made for an exciting obstacle course as we walked.\u00a0 Leicester Square was an easier station to use (fewer transfers), so we made good time back to our hotel.\u00a0 Once again we made time for our late afternoon nap.\u00a0 We ended up sleeping a little later than we had planned, so we decided to go to St. Pancras station to try some wine by the glass.\u00a0 Three or four days of beer had us looking to wine for a break.\u00a0 We had a couple of nice glasses of sauvignon blanc, along with some great artichoke dip (we had to ask the staff to identify the dip).\u00a0 Instead of going out to eat again, we decided to do some shopping at the M&S in the station, and we picked up sweet peppers stuffed with goat cheese, salami, diablo pepper cheese slices, and a bottle of Cava.\u00a0 The Cava was an inspiration of Kuniko\u2019s – we couldn\u2019t find a place selling wine openers, and sparkling is always easy to open.\u00a0 We brought it all back to our room and drank the Cava out of coffee cups.\u00a0 It was nice to have a slow night in, since we are off to Stonehenge tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Tuesday we continued our sightseeing of London, and headed out to see the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge.\u00a0 We took the Circle line to the Tower Hill station, and then walked a little ways to the Tower of London.\u00a0 We arrived a bit early so we decided to walk across the Tower […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-Ks","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}