London. It’s kind of overwhelming to be honest. I started with a plan to visit just a few places and spend some time at them and then I would see more another day, I’ve got 4 full days in this city after all. But no! I started at Tower Bridge, passed the Tower of London, saw St. Paul’s, Leaden Hall, the London Eye, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and passed by several memorials along the way. And I just walked to it all!!!! Also, at the moment there’s the BFG Dream Trail, where little Dream Jars have been set around at certain points in London and I kept running into those.
Tower Bridge opens at 10, I was there about 15 minutes early, which ended up being a good thing since a line was already forming. Right behind me in line was a couple with the fast pass and when the doors opened they headed in, by the time we made it past the bag check (because security is important) they had only jumped me in the line. Anyway, there are glass floors on both walk overs but on the west side there’s also a mirrored ceiling which is kind of trippy but mostly cool. I wasn’t there for the bridge raising and I wasn’t going to wait around for an hour and a half for it but oh well.
After that I headed for the Tower of London, turns out it’s £25 to get in!! I wasn’t willing to pay that much (not to say that you shouldn’t be or anything). But there are some fair views from the outside and several informative signs that you can read without going inside.
This is where it kind of started failing on me. I went to St. Paul’s but didn’t even try to go inside, I just kept getting distracted and didn’t even stop.
I wandered along and saw the London Eye and thought “I’ll head over there, it’s not that far”. I ended up on festival pier and found the Southbank Book Market under the bridge!! How cool!! This is where I stopped for lunch before continuing on towards the Eye. Again, didn’t even attempt to get on it, though there was massive line so I guess I can’t be blamed for that one.
From the Eye you can see Big Ben so I headed in that direction and again, supper crowded. I also contemplated being a really obvious thief and snatching the phones off their selfie sticks way out in the middle of the sidewalk or the kid in the stroller 3 feet from mom and dad who were taking their selfies… poor parenting alert!
I kept walking and realized I was nearly to Buckingham Palace so I kept going and my god the number of tourists!!! I pretty much just passed through there and didn’t look back, it was way too crowded!!
So I’m thinking I need to go back to some of these places and actually take the time to explore them which was the original plan but clearly that didn’t work.