London

My trip to London was fun. My Mom and I traveled from Kilkenny, Ireland back to Dublin and had to catch a ferry. We missed the ferry to Holyhead, Wales so we had to go to Dun Laoghaire to catch another ferry. That put us a few hours off schedule and we finally were in Holyhead by 9pm. Unfortunately, almost all restaurants close in the UK by 6 or 8 at the latest and it was a Sunday. Thank god for the Chinese. One place was open and it was a Chinese restaurant, so we had a nice dinner and took our time since we had some time to kill. Since we missed the first train to London, we had to take one that left at 2am. We finally reached London early in the morning and checked into our hotel and slept a few hours before heading out to see the city.
This is outside Buckingham Palace looking back towards the River Thames and the London Eye, you can barely see it in the distance. The London Eye is a big sightseeing ferris wheel across from Big Ben and the Parliament building that is ugly and should be removed.

This is Buckingham Palace. The grounds around the area were very nice but the palace itself is nothing special, except that the Queen is there.

The outside of Westminister Abbey. It was a beautiful building.

We only had the one full day in London so we made the best of it by purchasing the double decker bus tour. We got a great deal that including a fish and chips lunch at the Sherlock Holmes Pub for 3 pounds and our ticket included the sightseeing river cruise for free. We could jump on and off the bus tour whenever we wanted so it work out well. This was definitely the way to see London because it is so large.

We were able to make it to the Globe Theatre, above when we jumped off the river cruise. It's across the River Thames from the London Tower, below. It's a reproduction of the Globe but on one of the maps I had a few days earlier it said the remains of the original Globe Theatre were nearby. I was determined to find it so my Mom and I walked around for a while and down a street I thought it might be on and finally we found it. It's off the beaten path and not many people were there, maybe 5 counting us. It was great to stand on the site where Shakespeare's plays had originally been performed.

The London Tower is a prison. It was well known for centuries as a place you didn't want to go. Hundreds of executions happened there including a queen and St. Thomas More. The heads of the executed were sometimes displayed on London Bridge to scare the people straight. However, I've read that this didn't really work. The prison was very large and we really didn't have time to go inside. I hope to do that the next time I'm in London.

The Tower Bridge is next to the London Tower but isn't nearly as old. We went right next to the bridge on the river cruise. We walked across the bridge to the Anchor Bar that was frequented by Shakespeare and Lord Chamberlain's Men. We went inside to have a drink and a look around.

The Anchor Bar.

Old Scotland Yard from the River Thames.

Trafalger Square was one of our first stops. I told my Mom that the statue on top of the monument that is cut off in the picture was probably Nelson and I was right. I was very proud of myself if you can't tell. This picture was taken from the steps of the Art Gallery looking down towards Big Ben.

One week prior, they made the arrests in England of the terrorists that planned to blow up Trafalger Square along with other London destinations.