Sightseeing - Day 1
We hired a guide to take us around central London.
Much like the taxi drivers that gregorio mentioned, the guides there are heavily regulated. They have to take some pretty intense tests on all sorts of historical stuff. After being certified, they get a nice blue medal that they hang around their neck. Many of the sights had some sort of guide restrictions. Some required a guide, some areas prevented guides from stopping so as not to clog up the area.
Most of the places we went were really big and really crowded. As mentioned earlier, though, the English really know how to move people along. Although there were people everywhere, queues (like my British?) never got really jammed up.
Unfortunately I don't have a pic of our first guide handy, but he was a really nice young chap (more British). Definitely our best guide/driver of the trip. Talked when he needed too, didn't when he didn't.
We first walked around the central area a bit.
The guide pointed out a place where one Harry Potter scene was shot. Apprently, in the movie, Ron is against this wall looking around the corner.
We passed by a changing of the guards. Not THE changing of the guards. They have a lot of changing of the guards. These guards were on horses. Pretty cool.
We learned that the guards were actual military folks.
Then, it was on to Westminster Abbey.
Next to that, however, is Parliament and Big Ben. We were reminded several times that Big Ben refers to the clock, not the building. Unfortunately, both the clock and the building were covered with scaffolding. It seems that the tower is sinking and they must prop it up. They were also working on the entire Parliament building as well.
The guide told us some interesting stories about Parliament that I forgot already. Something about knocking on the door and being refused then walking back or something. Someone got beheaded. I dunno.
We went through a square with a lot of statues, the main one being Churchill. They love Churchill (more on this later). We were told many stories about him but this one goes that he didn't want a statue here because he didn't want birds to poop on him. They promised him they would make it bird proof, but I can assure you there was bird poop on him.
Next stop was Westminster Abbey. It is huge. And beautiful.
I don't have many pictures because they don't let you take pictures once you are inside the church part. I got this one before we entered the no pic zone.
It is hard to describe how incredible this was. It is enormous and full of dead people. They are buried everywhere. Some are in above ground stone coffins, some under the floor. They aren't burying bodies there anymore but they continue to put urns of ashes there. Stephen Hawking is the latest.
There are random kings and queens and other royalty in different places. There are also areas for people that excelled at certain things. For example, Hawking is with the great scientists, including Newton. There is an area for writers, a Shakespeare area, and one for military greats.
They have a room with a bunch of plaques and swords and fancy hats that is the order of the Bath. I think this is mostly military people but not sure. When one dies, another gets to pick out a fancy hat to put on top of his space.
The guide told us a bunch about kings and queens. Edward the Confessor, Queen Victoria. Some others. Apparently Henry the VIII's body got bloated and blew up in his coffin.
Our next stop was Churchill's War Room. This is where Churchill ran the war. It was just a bit underground and not really all that protected. One bomb could have wiped it out. They didn't seem to have any grand plan for protecting anything during the war other than turning lights off at night. The random bombs just never landed in a lot of places that would have been really bad. The guide told us one landed near enough to do damage, but didn't explode.
We had some special tickets for this and were escorted right in and met by another guide. He is regarded as the foremost Churchill historian. Not gonna argue because he knew a lot of **** about Churchill. Even our guide was super impressed and excited about this.
The war room area is a series of room that they have plexiglassed in so you can see the rooms, but you can't go in the rooms. Only, we could. The historian had keys to everything. It was really really weird being on the inside of the glass. Here's a really blurry pic of the historian and people looking in on us.
Our first stop was the main war room. Not only did we get into the room, we were allowed to sit IN CHURCHILL'S CHAIR! OMG! It was pretty incredible.
The other rooms were really cool too. One was a map room with different colored phones. One was where Churchill slept.
The historian told us a lot of cool stories about how they could have easily lost the war and how the US helped them and how great Churchill was.
At the end there is a Churchill museum. They centerpiece is the interactive table where you can touch a year, then a month, then a day. Some of the days just tell you what happened. Some trigger some really cool graphics like planes flying across the board or poppies.
I can't really describe how cool this was, but it was definitely, by far, the best interactive display of any museum I've ever been in. If you ever go to England and even if you can't get the fancy guided tour, I'd highly recommend visiting this place.
By then it was getting towards dinner time and our guide was done. We decided to head off to Covent Gardens for dinner.
Along the way we saw some really Englandy stuff.
Mailbox
Litter (say it with an English accent, it's fun) box
Phone booth
I'm not sure what this door is, but I took a lot of pics of it.
Cute English ice cream truck.
Covent gardens is a big complex with shops and restaurants and street entertainment.
We ate a really nice outdoor italian place. Excellent food.
We decided to walk home from there. Even though we had a map, it was quite challenging. Fortunately, we had my young smart niece to keep us from getting lost.
Here's a pic of our foofoo hotel bathroom.
Just a fantastic day.