The morning is a rinse and repeat of the previous 2 mornings so I won’t go into detail other than to say this will be my last morning in this routine. We leave tomorrow early, so this will likely be the last time I ever do this here in the history of the world. I go back to the room and we are off, taking the subway to London Bridge then splitting up into 2 parties. I take the older 2 to The Globe Theater while D takes Simon to The London Bridge Experience.
I’m not necessarily a Shakespeare fan, but I feel this is an integral part of the history here, and as an added bonus, there wasn’t a series of killings that led to the point we’re at today. Since we’ve done a lot of the A list things, and we’re about out of museum energy at the moment, I thought this was a good alternative to check out. I had no idea if it would be cool or lousy, and there was only 1 real way to find out. And thus we have a morning plan.
On the way we happen upon Gentlemen Baristas, which is a pleasant surprise and turns out to be a tasty bonus this morning.
We walk along the water to get there and it’s a quiet & peaceful morning. The temperatures are cool and it’s a lovely day today.
The Globe tour starts at 10:30 so they have us go downstairs and wait in a sort of common/waiting area that has a little information to keep you occupied but not much. So we mostly sit around and while the time away, so to speak.
As we wait for the tour to start, I find myself wondering how best to structure a trip like this in the future. Do we need to build “dumb time” into the schedule? Maybe it’s good for us to leave the kids in the room/apartment for 1-2 hours every day which gives them time to be unmonitored kids and provides us some much-needed down time to detox a little. The kids are old enough to deal with it. Thinking ahead, I’m just not sure how this will play out if we go to the Southwest next summer.
The tour starts and we go into the theater for the ~40 minute tour. The bulk of this consists of sitting in various spots in the now reconstructed theater and listening to the tour guide talk about the theater as it was, and as it is now. The theater is a thing of beauty, and makes me wish we were staying for the 12:00 show because it is, quite frankly, amazing. On top of this, the actors who will be performing at 12:00 are out there doing voice exercises and walking through their scenes. It makes the whole thing remarkable, and I’m thrilled we decided to come to see this. Both kids seemed to enjoy it.
We exit the tour, and D & Simon are sitting by the river waiting for us. We then proceed to walk across the Thames on the foot bridge and walk right up to St Paul’s Cathedral, which is truly a thing of beauty. This is included in the City Pass but we’re on a time schedule so we walk up to it, take some pics, and are on our way.
From there we walk along the Thames to Trafalgar Square, which is a lovely walk and with the cooler temps is a nice piece of the day. We go past the square and get to the original visitor center which is where we’ll be starting the Rock n Roll walking tour, starting at 1:00. On the way we grab lunch for less than 20£ which is pretty hard to do in this city. This is one of my complaints here, that everything is so brutally expensive.
We get there early, 12:15, get our tickets, then I go grab a cappuccino and the kids sit on their phones for 45 minutes until the tour starts. D joins me and we walk over to the square and use the restroom quickly.
The tour starts and Peter is the guide’s name, and he promptly lets us know it will be about the 1960s & 1970s, and if you were expecting different this may not be the best fit for you. I think most people knew what they were getting into and nobody leaves when he says that. He seems a bit square/dry but in the end he was solid & informative and the tour was well worth taking.
He starts by giving some general history on Rock n Roll in America, then gets into the British side of things. Led Zeppelin apparently have their roots in a Chinatown basement but they smoked so much refer none of the 3 surviving members can pinpoint where that was. At the Marquis Club, Pink Floyd used to play every Sunday & The Who played every Tuesday. This is also where Pete Townsend smashed his guitar for the the first time after he hit his head on the low ceiling, and a trademark move was born. We went by Trident Studios, which is the recording studio where Abbey Road & many, many songs were recorded. There was a mural of a woman on the wall next to it but nobody knew who it was. We went by the “birthplace” of the Rolling Stones, their first rehearsal story, and how they got their name. We also did a Soho stop which is not a source of too many factoids, but a large mock-up of the Sergeant Pepper album cover sits on the side of a building. He also told stories of Jimi Hendrix and his London beginnings, Paul & Linda McCartney meeting, and Fleetwood Mac starting. We then crossed the road and he told about the Ziggy Stardust album cover, where there is a plaque on the wall today. In the city of London there is a plaque for only 3 fictional characters: Ziggy Stardust, Sherlock Holmes, and Monty Python. The last stop was where the Beatles played on the roof of the building they owned at the time.
In all it was a solid tour, well worth taking the chance on. So far, the day was a total success.
The tour ended at Piccadilly Square, and we walked away and found some ice cream as a reward for the kids for hanging in there today. We took it across the street and they ate it in the middle of the circle with the big statue in the middle. This was a heavy tourist area, to be sure.
The last part of today’s tourism puzzle was a stop at the London Transport Museum, which was close to where we finished the walking tour. The art was my favorite thing here, which I found pretty interesting as there were many pieces on display. The museum itself was ok, but Simon found it really fun so it gave him something to do with the late afternoon as he scurried around to punch out holes on the map, which was good for him.
We finished up and sat outside the Jubilee Market and listened to music for a little bit, then went into the market to check out some of the arts stuff they had on display. As we moved into the late afternoon, the Kid Chaos started to come into full effect. We had reached the end of the gas tank and it was time to call it a day.
We took the subway home and hopped right into dinner at the Pride of Paddington, right around the corner from the apartment. This was our last meal in London and we wanted to give the kids a solid meal. I got the shepherds pie and it was fantastic. The kids wiped out all their food as well as dessert for all of them.
With that, our 3 full days of London have come to an end. In the morning, we’ll wake up and be on a train to Brussels, Belgium for the next, much quicker, stop on the 2019 Summer EU tour.
Traveling Normandy 