May 8, 2015
Once off the
plane, we walked to the Border Control area and the line moved well, but it was
a long trek to the next terminal, down two or three storeys underground to pass
through a wide tunnel under the plane gates and back up. There were moving
walkways, like flat escalators to use, but we chose to walk. There were escalators
and stairs to change levels and we took stairs where ever possible. The whole
group of 12 was on the bus to transfer us to our hotel by 10:30 a.m. We have
already logged 2,054 steps.
On our route,
once in Greater London, we saw the London Eye (or Millennium Wheel) across
the Thames River in the borough of
Southwark, as we drove along the Embankment in the borough of Westminster,
seeing lots of television cameras by the Houses of Parliament and Westminster
Abbey. The British had just elected a
Conservative majority government on May 7th. In Scotland the
majority was for the Scottish National Party. The media attention was to cover
the 70th anniversary of VE Day (Victory in Europe ending the
European part of World War 2). We drove past the Tower of London and saw Tower
Bridge as we neared the Grange Tower Bridge hotel. The check-in went smoothly
and we were in our 9th floor room by noon. Since our luggage was
being taken to our room by a porter, of course, we used the stairs to get to
our spacious room, with its view of London. We had logged 2,397 steps when we
left the hotel at 12:30 p.m. for our exploration along the Thames River from
Tower Bridge to Westminster Bridge.
A five minute
walk toward the Thames River took us to see the hotel where we stayed on our
first visit in 1983 beside the Tower Bridge. The hotel was as we remembered it,
across the street from the 1,000 year old Tower of London. We walked around the
St. Katharine’s
Docks and saw where to get tickets
for the Thames River boat cruises, but decided to walk to the London Eye, only
3 ½ km away and perhaps for the return to the hotel take the boat cruise or a
hop-on, hop-off bus and see other areas of London, depending on the time.
We climbed the steps up to the walkway on Tower Bridge,
built in 1895, and passed the Tower Bridge Exhibition Ticket booth and found
that there was a wind as we crossed the bridge to the borough of Bermondsey. We
could see the cruiser Belfast, which
now a floating museum, as we crossed. On
this side we noticed sidewalk markers telling us that we were walking part of Jubilee
walkway, a 24 km route created to mark Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Anniversary in
1977 and expanded over the years. We walked part of the Western Loop, Eastern
Loop and section 8 of the Jubilee Greenway Loop, about 8 km plus our detours
from the paths.
The skies looked like we might encounter some rain during
the afternoon, but we were wearing waterproof hooded jackets. Our first stop in
the borough of Bermondsey was Hay’s Galleria of shops and cafés for a quick
lunch. It was originally built in 1850 as a wharf, but is filled in and there
is just an interesting water sculpture, rather than clipper ships taking tea
from India and China to the warehouses. At Costa Coffee, we bought coffee and
an Italian bun to share then sat in their patio in the open courtyard before
browsing and buying some cards. Then we went back to the walkway along the
Thames River and worked our way into the borough of Southwark to see the
Cathedral and the Borough Market.
Southwark Cathedral is an early Gothic London church which has its origins
in the first church built in 1106 and now has parts from 1207, the 15th
century and a rebuild in the late 19th century which can be seen as
different materials were used in the various stages of construction. Just
across the lane from it is the Borough Market, on the south side. Borough
Market is the oldest market in London area with historical references that
there was a market here in the 13th century. There has been a market
on this site since the mid 1500s. Part of the market is located under a railway
viaduct off Borough High Street. There are more than 60 stalls with a wide
variety of goods - fresh produce, flowers, potted herbs, fish, meats including
venison and rabbit, spices, wines, ciders, cheeses, breads, coffees, chocolates,
pastries and even a stall selling Turkish Delight and Baklava. Our next
location was the London Eye, but we made a wrong turn and took 45 minutes to
get to it. It was hard to miss, once we
had our direction corrected. We were close to 11,000 steps when we arrived at
the ticket office, after 3 p.m. when the peak time was over. We only had a ten
minute wait in the ticket line and about the same amount of time in line to
board the capsule of the giant 135 meter Ferris Wheel, with 32 pods that can
hold 25 people each. The wheel does not stop for passengers to get on or off.
The London Eye was officially opened on New Year’s Eve 1999 as part of
millennial celebrations. It took about
half an hour to slowly make the one revolution which has great view of London. We
could see up and down the Thames River, St. James’ Park and zoomed in for a
picture of Buckingham Palace. The Houses
of Parliament were just across the Thames, we could see Westminster
Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral, but Tower Bridge was around a curve and we
could not see it. In the last 10 minutes
a gentle rain started. Our route continued, to cross Westminster Bridge, built
in 1750, to the City of London borough, in a light rain. We walked under the
trees along the Embankment then we crossed Waterloo Bridge. The 19th
century John Rennie designed Waterloo Bridge was opened in June 1817, the
second anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo and had a toll to help cover its
building cost. John Rennie also designed the 19th century London
Bridge. The current Waterloo Bridge was constructed during World War 2. We walked along another part of the Jubilee
Walkway and decided to start a search for a place to eat dinner as it was after
4:30 p.m. and we hadn’t eaten much. At the Millemium pedestrian bridge, we
crossed the Thames again and walked right up the front of Christopher Wren’s
St. Paul’s Cathedral built between 1675 and 1711 after a previous church was
destroyed in London’s Great Fire of 1666. Next we walked along the Strand until
we arrived at the Monument, designed by Christopher Wren to commemorate the
1666 Great Fire of London with a loss of 13,000 houses. Then we meandered back
to the Tower of London, just after 6 p.m. and decided to have dinner at a St.
Katharine’s Dock restaurant, Coté Brassiere. The menu offered a three course
meal for about $25 Canadian plus beverage. We chose appetizers of cold or hot
Potato and Leek Vichyssoise or riblettes with sourdough bread; entrées of puff
pastry with ratatouille of goat cheese, black olives, capers and olive oil or roasted
sea bass with creamed leek and mushrooms, then for dessert apple crumble with
vanilla ice cream or a creamy dark chocolate pudding topped with crème fraiche
along with a glass of wine or pint of beer.
It was less than a ten minute walk back to the hotel
where we climbed the 156 steps to our 9th floor room The pedometer
read 24,542 about 16 km walking today. It was just after 9 p.m. when we went to
bed, 33 ½ hours since we woke up to start our journey to London.
Just as I finish this
narrative, the Windows Operating system of the computer has failed and I cannot
post the blog entry.
There will not be further
postings until we get home and fix the problem or buy a new laptop.
May 7. 2015
Scott drove us
to the airport for the flight to Toronto on May 7th. We met the members of the group – hosts,
Brian and Brendene; first time cruisers, Trish and Dave; our friends, Peter and
Karen; and past cruisers from other hosted groups, Ed & Linda and Trudy
& Geisa. The other couple also past cruisers from other hosted groups, Ken
and Evangeline will join us in London.
We checked in and the Toronto to London flight was 2 hours later than
the itinerary time. Brendene checked
with Carlson Wagonlit, the travel company that arranged the group tour, to be
sure that they were aware of the change to check that our transfer bus to the
London hotel would arrive to pick us up at London’s Heathrow airport at the
proper time. We arrived in Toronto airport about 3:30 p.m. and had 4 ½ hours
between flights to grab a bite to eat and walk around the post security
International Flights area of the airport. At 6:30, we had logged 11,367 steps.
Karen’s sister and family were on the same flight, but in another compartment
of the plane. We found seats in the gate waiting lounge and read or chatted
with the other group members until the plane boarded. The flights from home to
London cover about 6,400 kilometers. Takeoff was 9:09 p.m. (or 2:09 a.m. London
time). Logged steps were 12,235. Within an hour, a hot meal of Shepherd’s pie
or creamed chicken and vegetables with a bun, corn and cabbage salad, wine and
dessert of a brownie was served. We dosed and may have slept for an hour in
total before giving up and either reading or watching a movie or the map of our
flight. Around 6 a.m. London time, there was some turbulence as we were getting
closer to Ireland. A snack of banana bread and coffee, tea, juice or water was
served around 7:30 a.m. We were 255 miles west of Cork, Ireland and 582 miles
east of London Heathrow. About 40 minutes
before landing, the British landing cards for Border Control were distributed.
We touched down just before 9 a.m. with cloudy skies and a temperature of 53.6
F.
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