September 22: The Second Sojourn - London's South bank

The Tower Bridge at the end of our walk. The Tower of London is at the left end of the bridge.

(Amanda took this shot of the three of us on the train - off to London!)

We are not too far from London, so we decided to take a day trip to check it out. The 'South Bank' is the South side of the Thames river and the walk extends from the London Eye to the Tower bridge, at least. That's how far we went, anyway.

The first adventure was riding the train! British Rail is easy to use, not too expensive ($22 for adults and about half that for kids, round trip), and a 100 times easier than trying to drive in the city. It was new for Brittany and John, and they really enjoyed it. You can get an 'all day travel' pass that lets you ride the train, bus or subway ("The Tube") as much as needed.

(this is the pod right beside ours on the London Eye)
(John and Shirleen on the Eye)
The London Eye is a giant ferris wheel on the banks of the Thames river from which you can see many of the major landmarks in London. It's 35 meters tall, which converted to US units is something like 75 miles high. (not exactly sure about that calculation) On a clear day you can see 40 kilometers whichs converts to something like 24 miles and you can actually see Windsor castle if you know where to look. (no, of course we didn't know where to look!) You ride in large glass pods that hold about 25 people. It moves very slowly and only stops to let on handicapped people, otherwise you step on while it moves. One revolution takes about 30 minutes. We were directly across the river from where the UK House of Lords and House of Commons meets, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, but we decided to leave the the north bank for another trip.

(Brittany on one of the carved, wooden rocking horses)
Heading along our side we encountered a ton of street artists, some human statues, several musicians, an escape artist who escaped from chains and a straight jacket while we watched, and the one I liked the best, a street artist doing giant replicas of a couple of famous paintings on a canvas stretched out on the pavement. (video of her below)
We got hungry at that point (John - 12 years old - is hungry constantly) and walked down to Gabriel's Wharf to eat. It's a neat little street with shops and restaurants. We had a great lunch, and then found a Crepe shop and had nutella, bananas and whipped cream crepes for dessert. Not as good as the French make, but pretty close. Just a different style of making the crepe. As you will see in the pictures, there were bunches of carved wooden rocking horses.

(The Golden Hinde)

From there we went down to the Tate Modern and walked most of one floor before the little one's boredom got the best of them. Saw some beautiful stuff, the names I knew were Monet, Matisse and Jackson Pollack but there was other great stuff too. And of course some very boring stuff too. Great museum and free. We'll go back.
Almost next door is the rebuilt Globe Theater, where many of Shakespear's plays were (and still are) done. We couldn't tour the place because there was an performance going on, Othello I think.
Just down from there is The Golden Hinde, Sir Francis Drake's ship. It has been refurbished and is now on land, but it is available to tour. The sign said it had traveled over 140,000 miles. I cannot imagine going around the world in that little boat. According to the sign you can book the opportunity to spend the night on it. Can't imagine how much that would cost, but John's already planning on it.

Then we found the best treasure of all, a Gelato stand!! Shirleen and I are big fans of the Italian ice cream and this is the first time we've had it since our trip to Italy a few years ago. It was perfect, just as good as we remembered!

There was much more to see. The London Bridge (the original was sold and is now in Lake Havasue AZ) is just a new, boring bridge. But the Tower Bridge, right by the Tower of London is beautiful. (picture at the top)

And then the 'all day pass' came in handy, we were tired so we just went to the closest station, hopped on the train and took it to Waterloo station where we caught the train back to Bracknell. Another great day.

Here's a video of that artist I mentioned, hope it will play for you.