London Photos #2

……. and here is the second installment of our London trip memoirs.  It was certainly a whirlwind week, and we enjoyed every minute of it!!  

Sunday morning, we headed to the tube station near our flat, on our way to church at Westminster Abbey with Zuzana and Timko.

The Underground was such a great way to get around in London!  We all bought Oyster cards with a week of unlimited travel on the Underground as well as the famous red double decker buses and trams all over London.  

Ready for church at Westminster Abbey.  

The deanery next to Westminster Abbey (presumably where there are church offices.)

One of the rose windows inside Westminster Abbey.

It was an amazing experience to attend worship services in such a magnificent place.

After church, Tim and I went to meet up with the last of our three different free walking tours of London (different areas and sights for each one).  We stopped in a Tesco (grocery store) and picked up some pasty's, fruit, and Diet Cokes for a quick picnic lunch.  I reached to the back for some cold cans, and we didn't notice until we sat down that we had randomly gotten these two names!!   LOL!! 

This is the view of Tower Bridge from the center of London Bridge.

The new London Bridge needs a sign to identify it, because it's nothing special now that they sold the previous one and it was moved to Arizona!!  

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre sits right on the Thames.

Walking across Millennium Bridge towards St. Paul's Cathedral.

One story that our guide told was about a guy who makes art from the chewing gum wads on the metal walking surface of Millennium Bridge.  He has developed a technique of painting and shellacking the gum, then using a blow torch to harden the surface into permanent 'art'.  There are hundreds of these all across the bridge!   Cool!  

Our tour finished up near St. Paul's, and it just so happened that there was an organ concert happening right about the time we got there.  So, we were able to enter for free instead of paying the normal huge entry fee, AND we were treated to a spectacular 45 minute performance on an incredible instrument!!  :-)  

The front of St. Paul's Cathedral after the Sunday evening organ concert.  

On Monday, Tim and I headed back to Buckingham Palace to see the Changing of the Guard from a different viewing spot up closer to the palace, since on our first free walking tour experience, the guide had us positioned to see the troop companies marching and bands playing as they paraded in and out from St. James's Park into the palace grounds.   

It was really cool to see more of the action up close this time!  

The company of troops marching out after being replaced, as seen by my camera held high above the throng of heads in front of me - HA! 

The new troops, ready for duty. My pictures here were all taken by holding the camera up high at arm's length, and shooting over heads in front of me.  I took tons of them, and a few turned out well!

Enjoying our visit to see Buckingham Palace from the outside.  

The crowds were huge for the Changing of the Guard, but afterwards people cleared out quickly. It was a fun experience, and we're glad that we saw the ceremony from two different perspectives on different days. 

On our way back downtown, we enjoyed this bagpiper performing on the street near Parliament.  There were many street musicians and buskers on the squares all over London, and we saw dancers, jugglers, as well as musicians every day.  

We attended a piano recital which was part of the Westminster Abbey Summer Lunchtime Recital series, held next door at St. Margaret's Church every Monday.  The program was excellent, with an Estonian pianist playing Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff -- WOW!!

For lunch we had our first fish & chips - delicious, and our next destination was the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square.  It's one of the finest art museums in the world with an extensive collection of paintings from all eras.  We especially enjoyed seeing works by Michelangelo and many Impressionists such as Monet and Renoir.  
  

A friend from Ankeny who has lived in London suggested that we go for afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason.  (Thanks for the tip, Brenda!)   So after the art museum, that's just what we did!

The beautiful silver teapots and accessories were so fancy, the tea was fabulous, and the cakes we chose were out of this world delicious!!  

One of the floors at the Fortnum & Mason department store.  We wandered around in several of the departments, and let's just say it was super pricey, even by London standards!  But it was a fun place to see on a late afternoon, for sure. 

The next morning, we headed to find the Twinings Tea shop and museum, and near it we noticed this enormous and impressive looking building, so we checked it out.  It turns out it's the Royal Courts of Justice, and it's open to the public.  There weren't many tourists there since it's a working government building with courtrooms and offices, but it's really awesome to see.  We even had soup and a baguette for lunch in their cafeteria at a very reasonable price since it's not a tourist trap!  (No photos allowed inside - rats!)

Twinings tea!  Delicious!!  

The Twinings museum was small but really interesting.  These are locked tea boxes that wealthy women would have in their houses, but the keys were closely guarded because tea was so valuable.  

I'm not including photos of all the many churches we saw.  We would always stop by and go inside any interesting old church, and this one was St. Mary le Strand, one of the loveliest Baroque churches in England, according to the tourist info.   

The interior was also beautiful.  St. Mary le Grand Church sits on foundations with traces of Roman, Saxon, and Medieval churches. 

Next we went across the street to Somerset House - another building built as a royal palace, which now has these fountains in the courtyard.  

The Tower of London was much bigger than we expected.  I guess we thought it was just a tower, when it's actually a whole castle with a moat and drawbridges.  

At one time there were even lions (but live ones instead of these statues) guarding the entrance to the Tower of London, before you'd even get to the drawbridge over the moat!

The Tower of London is where the famous Beefeaters serve as guards.   Of course this was another of those top tourist spots that costs an arm and a leg to get inside, so we were content to observe from the surrounding areas.   :-)  

The Tower Bridge, up close and personal. 

London also has a lot of new and distinctive skyscrapers, all with nicknames based on what they look like.  This one is the famous "Shard" - like a shard of glass.  

Other buildings on the London skyline, as seen overlooking the Thames from atop the Tower Bridge.  The "Walkie-Talkie" is at left, next is the "Cheese Grater", the "Gherkin" (yes, like a pickle) is in the middle, and the Tower of London is on the right.  

This area just off the Thames was originally a ship-building dock created to hold the high-masted clipper ships in the heydays of British trading around the world.

We continued down the Thames to the Tate Modern Art Gallery, which is an immense space for viewers, remodeled from a former power plant.  

Lots of the art was a little too modern for us to appreciate, but we did like the many Picasso's at Tate Modern. 

We overheard a guide with another group mentioning that this particular face can be viewed as one woman's face with two halves, or as the left side being the woman's face with the blue right side being her lover's face.  

The view across Millennium Bridge to St. Paul's, as seen from atop the Tate Modern.  We were so fortunate to have such nice weather for our whole time in London.  

I really enjoyed viewing the larger pieces of sculpture and paintings in the huge high-ceilinged gallery spaces created in Tate Modern.  

The front of Tate Modern -- it's so cool that they re-used the huge old power plant instead of just bulldozing it and creating some new modern structure.  Neat place!

On our second to last day in London, we joined Zuzana and Timko for a trip to Greenwich via the Underground.  Timko was our expert navigator through the tube as we transferred from one line to the next.   (Notice his Iowa Hawkeye cap!!)   :-)  

The Cutty Sark in the port at Greenwich.  This is one of the most famous and fastest of the clipper ships used for shipping tea.  Such a beautiful vessel!

Ready to go to the Royal Naval Museum in Greenwich.  There were lots of interesting displays inside.

The Old Royal Naval College was designed by Christopher Wren, and this location has been used for the filming of many Hollywood movies.  

This is the magnificent Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College, supposedly the finest dining hall in Europe.  It was definitely impressive!!  

The Maritime Museum grounds

This museum picture made the blog because it's the boat on which King George I rode during the first performance of Handel's Water Music (on the river, with musicians playing from a barge).  How cool is that??!!??   :-) 

Next we walked up the hill behind the Royal Naval College to the Greenwich Observatory, and this was the view from up on top.  

Standing on opposite sides of the Prime Meridian, where East meets West, and we were at 0º longitude.  

The official time - Greenwich Mean Time - at the Royal Observatory.  It's a 24-hour clock.

This is the hill up to the observatory and the official prime meridian line. 

Back down the hill towards the river is the Queen's House with it's lovely gardens. which was a royal residence for a while in the early 1600's.

This spiral staircase inside the Queen's House was the largest unsupported spiral staircase   in the world. 

Our next destination was the Museum of London Docklands, and we only got there an hour before closing, which was unfortunate because it turned out to be one of the best places we visited.  It's a free museum (we hit up a lot of those!), and it was fabulous.  We learned so much about the history of London as a major shipping port ever since Roman times.  The displays and descriptions were really interesting and well done.  

Next we headed to King's Cross Station (and all Harry Potter fans will know why), but we noticed this building just outside the station, so we went around to see it from the front.  It looked like some former palace, or maybe part of it was a monastery or university???
We couldn't tell.

Well, it turns out that St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel was originally built as the largest and most luxurious hotel in the world, as well as the front of the St. Pancras railway station, and it is still an incredibly posh place.  We actually just walked in the front doors and talked to the bellmen/porters for a while to find out about it.   :-)   

The front of King's Cross Station in London!!

And of course, the infamous Platform 9 3/4, the gateway to the train to Hogwarts!  There was an endless line to go have your picture taken holding onto the cart, so we just got a quick shot of the cart between times.  

For our last day in London, we packed in more free museums and sights!!  We could have spent all day at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is absolutely mammoth.  We especially enjoyed the many sculptures. 

We had entered via an underground passage from the tube station, so I went outside to take a picture of the front of the museum when we got upstairs to ground level.

Most museums have a few samples of ancient artifacts, but here at the V & A, there were so many things to see it was almost overwhelming.

This is the courtyard inside the museum (with completely different architecture and brick than the front stone entrance), where we ate our lunch of cheese, a baguette, fruit and water, which we'd brought along with us.  We shared a table with a nice retired couple from a town outside of London.  

Rodin donated many of his sculptures to the V & A Museum.

It felt like we were in the Smithsonian --- so many displays of history from all parts of the world.  I really enjoyed the jewelry displays.  

One of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks!

There was also a beautiful exhibit of clothing and fashions through the centuries.  There was so much too see, and too little time!! 

We decided not to go to the (free) Natural History Museum, but we walked by to see the architecture of the building itself.  It's another gigantic museum too.  

Some of the gargoyles on the Natural History Museum

The Royal Albert Hall (photo intentionally taken with London double-decker buses in front), which is a famous concert hall and performance venue.  

The Albert Memorial was built by Queen Victoria, in Kensington Gardens across from Royal Albert Hall.  It's 176 feet tall in Gothic Revival style - it's quite a sight!

We stopped by Kensington Palace just in case we'd get a chance to see any of the Royals.  LOL!!  Since it was little Prince George's first birthday the week we were in London, we had seen in the news that the Queen had joined William and Kate for a birthday party here.  

We were enchanted by all the lovely English gardens all over London.  This one is right next to Kensington Palace.  

Kensington Gardens are adjacent to Hyde Park, but it's a huge area, so we actually took a bus down to the far side where we visited Speaker's Corner.  Since we had been in charge of the Speaker's Corner competitions at our school for the past two years, we had an interest in seeing where it all began.  There were good informational posters to read too!

More gardens at Hyde Park

For our last event in London, we decided to attend the Evensong service at St. Paul's Cathedral.  It was a perfect way to end our trip, giving thanks and worshipping our awesome God in such a magnificent place.  

On the way to the Underground station near St. Paul's after the service, we saw this area set aside for some fun.  We didn't have to wait long, and then after warming up a bit, Tim and I played a couple of spirited games of ping pong.  He won both games, of course.
No mercy!  Such fun though!!

This scene was right across from where we played ping pong, with all the business folks standing outside enjoying a pint.  Standing, not sitting.  I still don't get that part!!   LOL!!  

Our group waiting for our bus transport back to the airport on Friday morning.  It was a fabulous trip to London with these old and new Slovak friends!!