London, March 2004 (page 6 of 8)
Tourist Stuff, Part 2
I will resume the recounting of the touristy stuff by backpedaling to our second day in London. It was a big one. After coming face to face with our mortality in the form of a goose at Kew Gardens, we headed back to central London for some sight seeing. We got out of the subway at Westminster and looked up at Big Ben. True to its name, it was big.
After gawking at Big Ben and Parliament, we went for a walk. We walked down Whitehall to Trafalger Square, and then down the Strand and Fleet Street. Much like downtown New York, this area was very quiet on a weekend afternoon. Almost all of the shops were closed. Afterwards, we discovered that we had passed by a pub that had been built on the site of Sweeney Todd’s barber shop. I never thought that Sweeney Todd was real, but the CAMRA Good Beer Guide states it as fact. So there you go.
We walked all the way to the Millennium Bridge, which is a very nice pedestrian bridge over the Thames. We went across the bridge to the Tate Modern, and tried to check out the rebuilt Globe theater, but we just missed the last tour of the day. We spent a little time wandering around that area, imagining the places that Shakespeare must’ve gone. It definitely feels older than the rest of London, and we enjoyed the
afternoon. We walked back north across the London Bridge which crosses the Thames at a site where a bridge has stood for many centuries, but which nevertheless feels rather modern and sterile. Concrete is concrete wherever you go, I guess. We ended our walking tour at The Monument, which was built in dedication of the fire that burned down almost all of the city in the seventeenth century. Having been raised an Episcopalian, I must admit that I was tickled to read about the anti-Pope engraving that was later erased. There aren’t many outlets in the states for Episcopalian pride.
And that was the biggest day of walking that we had. After all that walking we needed a little refreshment…