Awake My Soul: Tea and Crumpets

Greetings from London! Bear with me, this is a long one. As will be the next one from Paris, I'm sure. There was so much to do and see in our couple days here, but we made the most of it and are tired and happy. It feels like we have been gone forever, but London was only 10 days into our trip! Traveling is truly exhausting. But Tyler and I are also kind of made for that sort of lifestyle...we are enjoying the packed-full days and hard-sleeping nights. Without further ado, I give you...London:

We left Manchester at 5:45 AM in the morning and got to London around 11 AM. Since we couldn't check into our hostel until 2, we decided we'd start exploring London. We left our bags at a luggage counter at the train station and set off on a route we'd planned ahead of time. We took a bus to the British Museum (home of the Rosetta Stone and countless other artifacts from just about every culture and every time period ever...and it's free!) and spent a couple of hours just roaming the halls and oohing and ahhing over all the cool pieces of history we were getting to see. We then walked a ways toward the Thames River and saw the Temple Church (origin of the Knights Templar) and on over to St. Paul's Cathedral. Quite impressive. After that we crossed the river on the Millennium Bridge and saw Shakespeare's Globe Theater (a re-creation, of course, modeled after the original and still houses plays today) and the Tate Modern Art Gallery. From there we walked along the river until we got to the Westminster Bridge, which is where we got our first glimpse of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. As impressive as it was, we were pretty tired and ready to check into our hostel, the Phoenix. Here are a few pictures:

Rosetta Stone!

Outside the British Museum

The Royal Courts of Justice. Impressive, no?

The top dome of St. Paul's Cathedral

More of St. Paul's

St. Paul's. So beautiful!

Crossing the Millennium Bridge. You can see the Tower Bridge from here!

The Globe Theater

Us at Big Ben! So exciting :)

Words really can't describe this.

The outside of our hostel, the Phoenix

Common room at the hostel


Our sleeping quarters

The next day we decided to buy an all-day unlimited pass for all the metros, buses, and trams throughout the city. We had a lot to see! We started at the monument to the Great Fire of London in 1666 and from there walked to the Tower of London. There's something eerily majestic about old castles...not that I spend a great deal of time around them or anything. A sense of excitement and amazement runs through you when you try to picture it like it used to be, with a moat and drawbridge and cannons and gates and dungeons and grand ballrooms and miles and miles of hallways and servants and everything...anyway. After the Tower we hopped on a metro and went to check out the Natural History Museum (which is free, by the way). I have to hand it to them, their dinosaur exhibit is pretty spectacular. We also spent a bit of time in the Science Museum (also free), but there was just so much to see and we were so hungry that we decided to move on. We ate lunch in the courtyard between Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey. Oh, Westminster Abbey. So ornate, so huge, and a thousand years old. How??! Also, not to mention, the burial place of Geoffrey Chaucer, Isaac Newton, and Charles Darwin, to name a few. After lunch we took a stroll through St. James' Park and happened upon a parade for a 60th celebration of something...it was pretty cool. On the other side of the park was Buckingham Palace, and from there we decided we couldn't be this close and not see Abbey Road. So that's where we finished that day. Here are a few more pictures:

London Fire Monument

The Tower of London

More of the Tower. So cool!

The Tower Bridge

Tyler's favorite thing. Dinos at the Natural History Museum

Half of our view from our lunch spot. Not bad.

Westminster. WOW.

More of Westminster. Double WOW.

The parade thingy...we had no clue why it was happening, but we enjoyed it.

A fountain in St. James' Park


I may have gotten a little carried away with all my bird picture-taking.

At Buckingham Palace

Classic. Though we just don't quite have the pizazz that the Beatles did...

So. One more half day and still a few things to see. Namely, the Sherlock Holmes Museum, Regent's Park/Queen Mary's Gardens, and King's Cross Station. We got up early and headed to 221B Baker Street, then came back and had breakfast at the hostel. Then we checked out and took a stroll through Regent's Park and Queen Mary's Gardens, which weren't quite in full bloom but beautiful nonetheless. Of course, no trip to London would be complete without at least an attempt at getting onto Platform 9 3/4, so that was our last stop before heading to Paris. Here are just a few more pictures.