Our trip to London commenced with an interesting drive into the southern part of the city. Our Twitham Court hostess Sally recommended we park for free on the street in her old neighborhood. We were a little concerned; however, my car is a bit of a junker anyway, and if anyone really wanted to steal it, they'd be really disappointed to find the steering wheel on the wrong side. A fast get-away for an auto thief would be a little more complicated!
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| Marble Arch: originally constructed 1828 as part of Buckingham Palace under the famous balcony; but moved to this famous corner (Oxford St) in 1851 --supposedly only Royals are to pass thru the central arch...until they moved it and now we can all feel like royalty! |
Parked, walked, found the bus and the tube station and in about 30 minutes we were in Hyde Park heading towards Marble Arch, our first "tourist" site and landmark to find the hotel. We stayed at the military club founded by Churchill,
Victory Services Club. It was a nice enough place, very small and certainly not the Hilton,
but the price was unbeatable for the location.
Our first quest: Toy stores! Hamley's located on Regent Street looked to be an easy 8-10 blocks walk. Turned out on Boxing Day, people are not at home exchanging boxes, but rather out in London, shopping in massive droves! The crowds were so bad on Oxford street, we felt like fish swimming upstream! I wonder if Oxford Street is always that crazy, or if it was just because of the massive amount of tourists in the area that time of year? Dodged off the main street and found a much easier walk and turned out we didn't miss any of the big department store Christmas windows as they had already papered over them to take down the displays. Luckily Selfridges was still showing off their Gingerbread window!
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| Gingerbread village in a window at Selfridges on Oxford Street. The edible city – which took 400 hours to design, bake and build – spans a total surface area of 10 metres squared and looms 1.8m tall. All in all, it took 353kg of Biscuiteers gingerbread, 1245kgs of icing and royal icing sugars, over 80 litres of golden syrup and 85kg of caster sugar! The Lost London display features a fantasy scene of sugary delights made up of now demolished London buildings such as Euston Arch, Old London Bridge, Newgate Gaol, City of London Lying-In Hospital; and never-built architecture such as Selfridges Tower, the Glass Tower Bridge and a National Gallery Extension. |
We found Hamley's, along with about 5,000 other people and yet still managed to spend several hours looking at everything in the store! Came home with a few treasures including a zombie game, a set of magic playing cards and a few other tricks!
Later that evening, found a not very busy pub for dinner and with our countryside success, had such great expectations for this place, but were greatly disappointed. Stomachs full, headed back thru the still busy Oxford Street mass of pedestrians to the hotel.
Day 2 Quest: See some historical sights in London & find a game store. We started the day waiting outside the gates of Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard. Rain looked to be a possible problem, but when the band marched by, we thought we were in luck until the guard changed the sign to "Cancelled due to Rain" and the band turned around. The closest I could get to the Queen was the Lego statue at Hamley's!
From there a short walk to see Westminster Abbey, although no one wanted to go inside. Next door was Big Ben and Houses of Parliament. A view of the Eye in the distance, Tower of London near and finally Tower Bridge where we went inside to the bird's eye view of London! The Tower was interesting--especially since Alex has built the lego set; and it offered great views--especially as the sun came out!
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The Tower of London: which we viewed from the bridge as the line to go inside was DisneyWorld long. It's one of the world’s most famous fortresses: constructed by William the Conqueror in 1066 after his Norman victory; from 1200-1850s housed many exotic wild animals; a famous prison and the site of famous executions, including that of Anne Boleyn; was most significantly an armoury and even housed prisoners of WWII. It also contains fortified vaults housing the priceless crown jewels and is guarded by historic uniformed Beefeaters.
Tower Bridge is a suspension and draw bridge crossing the River Thames built in 1886–1894. The Towers reach 213feet into the sky and are connected by a glass pedestrian walkway.
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| The London Eye as viewed from the Tower Bridge-we thought about taking a ride on the Eye, but it was quite expensive, and after having been at the top of the city in the Tower, didn't feel like a priority. |
After a bit of history, we had more important things to discover, including taking the tube to Leicester Square, where we found a game shop. Coup and Love Letters --fun card games to fill our cold, dark weekends with things to do not involving screens!
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| Phone anyone? |
At this moment, I realized I had left all the passports in our car, on a random street, in a southern London suburb! Worried that the car really wouldn't be there, plus knowing I would need the passports for our return trip home on the train, I took the bus back to the car to retrieve them. Missing my stop the first time, as there were 2 stops with the same name --the difference being "Place" or something like that. Finally found the car, in the dark and grabbed the passports. I found the boys back at the hotel, engrossed in a competitive Zombie game in the lounge area. The next morning Mike and the big boys started their drive home meanwhile Zach and I stayed in the city for one more adventure before taking the train back to Germany. It was such a wonderful Christmas week together and definitely whet our appetite for London!
