Jan. 6
This morning's breakfast was downstairs again, in the basement of the hotel. The Polish crew has done a great job making the food and listening to their British English is quite funny. Each country has its own immigrants, and London gets a wide variety. The streets are extremely multicultural except in the financial district. How funny.
We took the Underground to Monument Station. Right outside the stop is a giant monument for the fire that destroyed most of London in 1666. We got off here because we wanted to walk across the London Bridge. Luckily, it was not falling at the moment. I don't know what the future might bring though. If you keep singing the song, it might fall.
Once across the bridge, we were in the old market area. Unfortunately, the markets were closed, as it was Sunday and early in the morning. It was not a total wash, since the quiet streets had their own ambiance to offer. There were some shopkeepers out cleaning the storefronts and a lot of people out exercising. Londoners like their morning runs and they were all out and about each morning. I guess when it is so gloomy and dark, you gotta do something to get the blood flowing. I was fighting my instinct to just stay inside and sleep the whole time.
This area of town is extremely old. It's right on the water front and the streets are winding and narrow. We soon came across an old galleon ship under restoration. The ship is normally open for tourists to visit, but it was closed and a lone man was working on it this morning. I watched him for a while and was able to walk around most of the ship. It was resting on an interesting type of dry dock. There were some gates used to keep back the water until the boat is finished. I don't think that it will ever see the open ocean since its mast is too tall to fit under the bridges. Most likely it will be just for tours and to remind us what the pirate boats used to look like on the Thames.
We tried to walk along the river as much as possible. The pub scene here must be pretty wild since there are so many of them. But being the morning, all was still and quiet. I figure that in the evening, all this would change! We passed in front of the new Shakespear's Globe Theater. It's a reconstruction the original Globe that was destroyed hundreds of years ago by fire. The project was started by an American who wanted to build the theater as close to what the original must have been like as possible. The tour was really expensive and we already had plans for the day, so we decided to move along. It's right on the riverfront very close to where the original was located, so seeing something here in the future would be pretty cool. Since it is open air, I guess we'll have to come back in the summer.
Soon, we came upon the Tate Modern Art Museum. You can't miss this one, as the art is housed in a gigantic renovated power plant. There is this HUGE smokestack that can be seen from miles away. The main generator room is bigger than an airplane hangar. We took our time in the museum and saw some really, to put it lightly, "weird" stuff. There were video displays, sculptures, paintings, and even a little music. The museum is 6 floors with a basement where the oil tanks used to be, so we took a few hours just to walk through it all. Children were everywhere. It was cool to see some of their responses to the strange things they saw. Many things were scary to them, and some were very inappropriate.
After the museum, we headed to the London Eye. Since the fog was so thick, we opted out of going for a ride. We have to leave something to come back to. Also, we heard that Las Vegas will be getting an giant Ferris wheel. If it's like anything else in Vegas, it will be smaller and cheaper. So, that might be our only way to ride the Eye.
The London Eye is right across the river from the Parliment and Big Ben, so we crossed the Waterloo Bridge and made a right. This took us by some really fancy buildings and into an area with lots of pubs. We settled down at the Silver Cross Pub. We were pretty hungry, and were looking forward to a traditional British meal. I went to the bar and ordered 2 different frothy beverages on tap, which were amazing. I had the fish and chips and Katherine had a meat pie. We just took our time and enjoyed our time in the pub. The food was so good it made us feel sick.
When we left the pub, the sun was down, so we started the long walk back to the hotel. The bad news was all that frothy beverage was needing to be released from our bodies. This romantic walk back had now turned into a mission to find a restroom. The cold air and the urge to go made this walk seem longer than it really was. I think we made record time from Trafalgar Square back to King's Cross!
Once back at the hotel with our fluids drained, we went out in search of toothpaste. There were many little markets around. We thought that finding a little tube would be easy. Nope! We could not find any small sizes and the large ones cost 2.5£. No thanks. With the exchange, that's almost $5 for a tube of toothpaste. I figured our teeth could miss out on a quality brushing until we get home. We salvaged a tiny amount that night, and luckily found out that British Airways has a mini tube in the back of the seats. I guess the British are taking this "bad teeth" thing seriously.
The night ended with us packing our bags and preparing for the return flight back to Vegas.
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