Farewell to London

We really liked London. Harry wasn't too sure coming in as he has an innate resistance to twitty Brits. But we didn't find too many of those here. What we found was an amazing conglomeration of people from every corner of the globe, many quite young, who are living together in harmony. We spent all of our time in Zone 1, which is Central London, so admittedly it's not a real cross section. But we felt it is a very inclusive place.

Here's an example: A Chinese gate leading into a few streets of a Chinatown, adjacent to an Edwardian (?) building. And the streets were closed to vehicle traffic from noon until midnight.

Then there's the history going back to neolithic times. Today we spent the afternoon at the Museum of London, which traces the city's history from the earliest times, through the Celts, the Romans, the Saxons, the medieval times, the plague and the great fire to modern times. They've dug so many artifacts from the Thames and they were all there on display.

This morning I visited Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and Harry went back to the Tate Modern to see an exhibit of Black Power struggle in America.  The Globe is a recent reconstruction built from plans of Shakespeare's open-air theatre in the round.  They put on a season of plays here every year, about half of them are Shakespeare's works and the others more contemporary.



So we really liked London and here are some of the things that appealed to us....

Elaborate bridges of stone. This is Blackfriars Bridge, probably has been there since Shakespeare's time.

Gorgeous buildings from a couple of centuries ago like this one. I could show you a lot more but this will suffice.

British icons like Piccadilly Circus, red telephone booths, double decker buses and Union Jacks--and tourists. All of these can be found pretty much everywhere. And they're real (I think).

The tube. In fact the whole transportation system. We purchased an Oyster card that lets us travel at the cheapest rate on the underground, the buses, the trams and the river buses. It's a great way to get around the city and each station is different. Some are older, like this one, and some are very modern. Tomorrow we'll take the Piccadilly line all the way out to Heathrow Airport to catch our plane to Spain. We'll be sad to leave this fascinating city, but not so sad to leave the clouds and rain. Apparently it's still warm and sunny in Madrid.  I'll keep you posted.

Oh, one more thing.  They were selling bowler hats at the Museum of London and Harry decided to try one one.  Do you think he looks maybe a little bit twitty himself?