When my alarm went off at 7:30am, all I wanted to do was go back to sleep, but then I realized… We’re going to London today!  We quickly got ready and finished packing the rest of our bags.  I must say, it is much easier to pack when we don’t need to worry about weighing our bags or putting our liquids into 3-1-1 bags!  We piled our suitcases in the elevator with all 3 on top of each other so DH and I could both squeeze in there together.  When we got down to the ground floor, there was someone waiting to get in the elevator.  I can only imagine what he thought when the doors opened and we literally fell out into the hallway haha 

We got to Marks and Spencers right when they opened at 8:30am and I left DH out in the passage while I ran in to pick up a few croissants for breakfast that we could eat while we were waiting to board our train. 

Time for another transportation fiasco story… We wanted to take Uber to get to Gare du Nord, but that is kind of hard to do without an international data plan.  I thought the wifi from our hotel would reach out to the street, but since the hotel was way back inside the passage, the wifi signal only reached to about halfway down the hall.  I ran back to the hotel lobby, logged into the free wifi, and requested an Uber, dropping my location pin out on Grands Boulevards.  Once the app said our driver was on his way, I didn’t really need the wifi signal anymore.  It said he would arrive in 12 minutes, so I went back out to DH to help him roll the bags to the sidewalk and so we could wait for our driver to arrive.  It was now 8:35am, so needing to wait 12 minutes for the Uber cut things a little close with getting to our train on time, but we hoped for the best.  Our Eurostar tickets said we needed to arrive around 9am for the 10am train, and Gare du Nord is only about a mile from our hotel.

Fifteen minutes later, our driver still hadn’t arrived, but since the wifi didn’t reach out to the sidewalk, I had no idea where he was or if he cancelled on us or what could have happened.  I didn’t want to go back to the hotel because if the Uber driver came right after I left, there was no way for DH to tell me he was there.  I decided to just make a run for it, so I left DH to watch all the luggage while I literally ran through the passage back to the hotel.  Luckily there weren’t many people there at this early hour so I didn’t knock anyone over in the process!  I logged back into the wifi and checked the Uber app and it said the driver was one minute away.  Oh no!  Now I had to run all the way back out to the sidewalk, and then I saw DH down the street, loading our bags into the trunk of a car.  That was way more complicated than it needed to be, but thank goodness we were finally sitting in the back of the Uber and heading to Gare du Nord.  Normal hotels located out on the street wouldn’t have that issue because the wifi probably reaches out to the sidewalk, or if not, then it isn’t a big deal to stand just inside the lobby with the wifi signal and look out the windows for when the Uber arrives.  In all that time waiting for the Uber, we never even saw a taxi drive by so I’m not sure how else we could have gotten to the train.  Maybe the person at the front desk of the hotel could call us a taxi?  They knew we were checking out and going to the train station, but didn’t offer to get us a taxi so I’m not sure if that something they even do.

Ten minutes later, we pulled up to the front of Gare du Nord.  This is a huge transit hub, so I wasn’t exactly sure where to go.  I saw a sign for Eurostar when we first walked into the station, and it said to go up the stairs opposite platform 17.  Hmm, ok, where is platform 17?  We walked a little further into the station and saw the platform numbers, so we walked down to platform 17 on the far side of the building, and then we saw the stairs and escalator right near it, leading upstairs to a balcony level.  At the top of the escalator, there wasn’t any signage so we didn’t know where to go next.  We just kept walking and eventually saw a ticket window, so we handed the agent our papers that I had printed out at home with our ticket information.

Remember how I specifically picked seats facing the front of the train?  I did not want to sit facing backwards for two and a half hours, and booking our tickets within days of them being released gave me that preference.  When we checked in for our train, they informed us that they had changed the train for our journey this morning, and we were automatically reassigned seats.  They were happy to tell us that we were still sitting together (not everyone was so lucky!), but now we were sitting at one of those groups of 4 seats with 2 seats facing backwards, then a slim table top surface, then 2 other people sitting forwards facing us.  Not only did we have to sit facing backwards, but now we had the knees of strangers bumping into us?  No way!!  That was a big downgrade in our seats and I was not happy about it.  The agent said I could speak with someone at the gate after going through security and ask to have our seats changed.

The next part went so quickly that I’m not sure of the exact order we did everything, but we went through passport control to leave France, another passport control to enter England, and security for Eurostar.  They tell you on your tickets to arrive 60 minutes early to leave time for all of those things, and I could see it taking a long time if there was a line, but somehow we got super lucky because there were only about 5 people ahead of us when we arrived.  By the time we were ready for each stage of the process, the people ahead of us had already finished, so we entered the Eurostar terminal by 9:15am. 

Our next stop was to find the gate agent to ask about changing our newly assigned seats.  We explained what happened to him and asked if he could change us to different seats that were facing forwards with no table and other people facing towards us.  He searched the computer for a few minutes, and then he quietly said “I am going to upgrade you because I couldn’t find any other seats.”  Sounds good to us!  We didn’t know what exactly was entailed in the “upgrade” because he wasn’t specific and I never researched other seating options besides the basic cheap seats we originally booked.  Either way, at least we could sit facing forwards for the 2.5 hour journey. 

We still had about half an hour until boarding so we found a place to sit and pass the time.  There is surprisingly limited seating in the waiting area here.  Instead of rows of chairs, they had a bunch of ottoman-like benches.  They were each large and square so people could sit around them on all sides with no backrests, and you had to share with other parties because there weren’t that many of them.  It just seemed kind of weird, like they didn’t expect a lot of people to be sitting and waiting for a train there.  We arrived on the early side and got one of the last spots, so many people had to stand.  Rows of folding chairs would have made more sense, if you ask me!

About 15 minutes prior to departure, the gates opened and we were able to board the train.  There was a huge bottleneck as everyone tried to pass through the same set of doors, and then slowly go down the escalator (actually, it was a moving ramp, not an escalator, so you had to put your foot in front of your rolling suitcases or they would roll down the ramp and get away from you!).  Our tickets said a coach number so we walked forward to find our train car.  There was an agent standing at the door of each train car to check everyone in individually, so it took a while until it was our turn.  There were a bunch of people on line for our coach but they had tickets for a different coach, so it was just very chaotic because no one seemed to know where they were supposed to go. 

When it was our turn to check in, the man found our names on his tablet and told us to climb on board and put our luggage in the rack.  There was space above our seats to put our smaller rolling carry on bags so we just put the larger bag in the shared luggage rack. When we got to our seats, I could tell that we were in a nicer coach than we had originally booked.  Our original coach had 2 seats on either side of the aisle, but this coach had 1 seat on one side of the aisle and 2 seats on the other side, so the seats were bigger than normal train seats.  We were seated on the side with 2 seats together.  Across the aisle from us was an older couple who were seated in front and in back of each other.  We saw them ask if they could be reseated together and the agent said that was not possible. 

The train left on time, and after a short journey through the Paris suburbs, we entered the countryside.  This was our view for most of the journey:

About 30 minutes into the ride, the agent who checked us in came down the aisle rolling a food and beverage cart.  He handed each person a tray of food and asked if they wanted coffee or tea.  When he got to our row, someone from the row before us asked for milk for the coffee so he paused to help that man, then continued serving trays to the row after us.  Hmmm, that was weird.  Did he skip our row because he got distracted and didn’t realize what row he was up to?  Or did he skip our row because he somehow knew that the gate agent upgraded our seats, but since we technically didn’t pay for seats with meal service, we wouldn’t get the tray of food?  Honestly, it didn’t really matter either way because we already ate our croissants from Marks and Spencer so neither of us was hungry, but we still wanted to know what happened.  After he finished serving all the trays, the agent walked through the coach again to see if anyone wanted a refill of coffee.  When he got to our row, he looked at us with a confused expression, then said “Oh! Did I forget to serve your tray?”  LOL DH and I looked at each other and tried not to laugh!  I guess we were questioning it for nothing and everyone in this coach gets meal service.  A moment later, the agent came back with our trays for breakfast.  The croissant was good, but the roll was so hard that I couldn’t bite into it, and the yogurt was plain (yuck!) so we didn’t eat much of it after all. 

A little after 11am, the train made a brief stop to let some passengers off, then we continued the rest of the way into London.  We arrived in St. Pancras station at 11:45am.  Since we already went through passport control in Paris, we were able to exit the train with our luggage and just walk straight out of the station.  I knew our hotel was close to St. Pancras station, but I didn’t realize exactly how close until we were there.  As long as we exited the station through the correct exit (there are A LOT of exits from St. Pancras and Kings Cross station!), we just had to walk across Euston Road and our hotel was right there on the closest side street.  It was a very convenient location when coming and going each day!

We got to Central Hotel around 12 noon, and at first, the lady at the front desk said we had to come back later to check in to our room.  We had a lot of things planned today so we really just wanted to get into our room now and not have to worry about checking in later.  She went upstairs to check with the maid and it turned out she had just finished cleaning one of the rooms so we were able to check in to that room.  I thought there was an elevator when I booked this hotel, but we never found it.  Our room was on the first floor, which was really the second floor because the lobby is its own floor.  The hotel has a narrow staircase with a lot of turns, so it was a little tricky to carry the luggage upstairs, but at least we only had to do it one time and it was just one flight.  When we got to our room and opened the door, we were in for quite a surprise.  Our room was sooooo small! There wasn’t even enough floor space to open the suitcase on the floor!  I am fairly certain this room was smaller than an inside cabin on a cruise ship!  The bathroom was so small that it had a sliding barn door, and when you sit on the toilet, the sink hangs over your lap and your toes hit into the frame of the shower stall!  There was a closet along the wall, but it was all hanging space and no shelves, so it wasn’t very useful for the kind of packing we did.  There were 2 nightstands with 3 drawers in each, so at least we could use that to store some of our clothes.  We made it work, but it was definitely a tight squeeze. 

I took this photo later in the week, so apologies for the messy room.  I was standing in the doorway, the closet and desk space is on the left, and the bathroom is on the right, and that’s it!  It was seriously the smallest hotel room I have ever seen!

After we got settled in the room, we went back across the street to St. Pancras Station to get some pounds from the ATM.  We also needed to get our transit cards so we found the vending machines.  We decided to get the Oyster Cards for each of us because I didn’t like the idea of using my contactless credit in case it got lost in the hustle and bustle of the Tube station or whatever.  The machine was very easy to use and we were able to load the 7-day Travelcard right onto the Oyster Card before it was dispensed from the machine.  We were able to pay for the cards using a Costco Visa chip and signature card, so everything worked seamlessly!

Thanks to our double breakfast on the Eurostar, we weren’t hungry for lunch yet, so we hopped on the Tube to get to the Westminster stop.  Already, we felt more at ease using the metro system in London.  Everything was in English so obviously that made things easier, but it was more than that.  Instead of having to go up and down a bunch of flights of stairs, London had escalators in their metro stations!  Funny enough, we still averaged over 20 flights of stairs per day in London, just like in Paris, but it was just nice knowing we could ride the escalator and conserve some energy in the stations.

Exiting the Westminster station, I had my first “OMG, I’m in London” moment… Big Ben was right in front of us!

Unfortunately, the tower is in the middle of a 4-year-long restoration process so it was completely hidden under scaffolding.  It wasn’t quite the iconic building we had hoped to see, but I guess we can just add it to the list of major monuments hidden under scaffolding that we saw on this vacation.  At least they left the clock exposed!  Unfortunately, the sun was in the wrong place for a decent photo so this was the best I could get…

Back when I was still researching our plans for this trip, I knew I wanted to take a sightseeing cruise along the Thames River.  There are several companies that offer similar tours between Westminster Bridge and Tower Bridge, and then a few other companies that continue further along the river to Greenwich and other towns.  The company I liked most was called City Cruises.  They offer scheduled tours throughout the day, going in both directions from Westminster Pier to Tower Pier.  They do have boats that go all the way to Greenwich but I didn’t plan to go out there considering our limited time in London.  You can buy tickets online but you need to pick a specific boat time.  I knew I wanted us to ride the boat today, but since we were just arriving from Paris and I didn’t know how the timing would work out, I didn’t want to pre-purchase tickets and lock us in to a time slot.  There wasn’t a price benefit to booking in advance, but it would have been nice to avoid waiting on a ticket line.

About a month before the trip, I was looking around on Groupon and found a deal for a 3-day unlimited ride pass with City Cruises which cost £1 more than the cost of one single ride.  Even though we had a busy schedule planned in London and I wasn’t sure if we would have time to take a second river cruise, it just made sense to buy the Groupon in case we were looking for something to do one day and had a chance to take a second cruise.  For only £1, we thought it was worth the risk that we may only take one ride. 

The Groupon confirmation wasn’t an actual ticket, so we needed to go to the ticket window when we got to the pier to exchange the voucher for our 3-day pass.  The lady gave me a receipt that we were supposed to use as our “ticket” so I kept it somewhere safe to make sure we wouldn’t lose it.  It was now a little after 1pm and the next boat was leaving at 1:20pm.  There were A LOT of people on line ahead of us, but we really wanted to get on this boat because the next one wasn’t leaving until 2pm.

When we finally reached the front of the line, a crew member helped us climb aboard, and we were glad we made it before the boat filled up.  The problem was that almost every seat upstairs was already taken.  We went back down to the lower level, but there wasn’t any air conditioning and it was extremely hot in there, plus it’s not very fun to sit inside because you don’t have a good view during the tour.  We went back upstairs again and had to look very closely at the rows to find rows where people were spread out and taking up more than one seat per person.  We did a similar cruise in Chicago and the staff walked around and forced people to squeeze in so everyone could have a seat.  It would have been nice if the staff on this boat did that instead of forcing us to ask people to move over.  We actually had a few people refuse to move in, which I thought was really rude because it’s not like they paid for 2 seats on the boat!  Eventually, we found one seat for each of us, but not in the same row, so we had to sit separately for the tour. It was kind of a bummer, but the tour only takes 40 minutes so we made it work.

After the boat left Westminster Pier, it went to the south side of the river to pick up more people at the London Eye Pier.  I honestly have no idea where those people found seats because the boat was already really full, but we stayed docked there for about 10 minutes so there must have been some people joining us.  While we had some time to kill, I got to take some fun photos of the London Eye!

Looking down the river towards Big Ben and Parliament as the boat turned around

As the boat pulled away from the London Eye Pier, the guide came on the microphone to introduce himself.  It was cool to have a live guide as we cruised along the river, but you could tell that his speech was scripted.  It was funny, but you could just tell that he did not write the jokes and he says the same thing on every tour.  The guide pointed out each landmark and gave a little anecdote or bit of information about each place.

Hungerford Bridge and Golden Jubilee Bridges

Cleopatra’s Needle

OXO Building, the “Pregnant” Building, and the Shard off in the distance

It’s funny how many of the buildings in London are named for their shape.  This one is said to look like a pregnant woman…

Shakespeare’s Globe Theater

A good view of the Cheese Grater, the Scalpel, and the Walkie Talkie Buildings

The Shard

The Walkie Talkie Building, with a good view of the top level where the Sky Garden is located

The Tower of London

Tower Bridge… you can also see our guide at the front of the building, and how crowded it was on the upper level

The boat docked right on time at 2pm, and by now we were getting hungry.  There was a Paul restaurant right near where we exited the pier, so we stopped in there to pick up a couple of sandwiches, and took them to go to eat on a nearby bench in the shade.

Our next destination was the Sky Garden, a free observation deck at the top of the Walkie Talkie building.  Each Monday at 8:30am London time, they release tickets on their website for 3 weeks in advance for time slots in 15-minute increments.  There are a different number of tickets available for each of those time slots, but it was usually around 150 tickets each.  When I was planning this trip, I knew we’d want to go to the Sky Garden today because it is so close to where we ended the river cruise, but since I did not know exactly which river cruise boat we would take, I didn’t know exactly what time we could go to the Sky Garden.  To hedge our bets, I booked the Sky Garden tickets for 2 time slots- 2:30pm for if we made the 1:20pm cruise, and 3:15pm for if we took the 2pm cruise.  Either way, we had about 30 minutes to get from Tower Pier to the Walkie Talkie building, a 0.4 mile walk away.  Since we took the 1:20pm cruise, we arrived at the Walkie Talkie building at 2:25pm to use our first set of tickets. 

There was a long line of people waiting outside the entrance, but they were all walk-ups who didn’t have timed entry tickets so we could walk past them.  When we went in the front door, we showed our tickets to the lady at the front desk and she told us to proceed through security.  Crazy enough, this was by far the strictest security we encountered so far on the trip.  In Paris, we had to go through a metal detector and our bags went through an X-ray machine at every museum.  At the Sky Garden, they do that as well, but they made us empty everything out of our pockets (even pieces of paper like the paper ticket we were holding to access the Sky Garden!) and we even had to take off our watches.  I thought they were going to make us take off our wedding bands, but luckily they didn’t go that far. 

Once that was done, we got in an elevator which went directly up to the 35^th floor for the Sky Garden.

We exited the elevator into a big open space with lots of tables and seating areas and a big bar in the middle.  We walked past that to go straight outside onto the balcony with a beautiful view over the Thames and Southwark.

The safety glass was good for blocking the wind, but not ideal for taking photos!

Looking straight up to the overhang above the balcony

I couldn’t get a good photo without the glare from the windows, so this was the best I could do…

It was such a clear day that it felt like we could see across all of England!  We were really lucky with the weather because this is London and I know they have a lot of rainy days!

Back inside the building, we walked up the stairs to see the views from a different angle.

You can see the big open seating area and the outdoor balcony behind us in this photo

There were live plants and trees growing in the Sky Garden, so it really was a garden in the sky!

A great view of the Gherkin, the Cheese Grater, and the Scalpel Buildings

Looking down into the Tower of London, and the Tower Bridge

We spent about 30 minutes walking around and checking out the views.  We had tickets to come back at night in a few days, so we planned to visit the bar at that time.  DH’s company has a small office near the Sky Garden, so he pre-arranged to visit the office later this afternoon.  We had some time to spare so we went for a walk around the City of London.

I thought this building looked really cool, especially with the sun reflecting off the balconies…

As we were walking, we cut through a pedestrian walkway between two buildings.  It was still June which is Pride month, so we saw a lot of celebration throughout London, including this rainbow-painted walkway!  How cool!

When we passed this red phone box on a side street, I couldn’t resist taking a photo!  It was the first one we saw, but as the days passed, we saw tons of them all over the city.

We cut through the shopping center called One New Change.  I loved how St. Paul’s Cathedral was framed between the buildings and reflected in the mirrored windows!

Another red phone box with St. Paul’s Cathedral peeking out through the trees

We’re in London!

We found our way to DH’s company’s office and spent some time chatting with his coworkers.  The original plan was to go to the Museum of London after leaving his office, but we decided to skip the museum and find somewhere to sit down and have a drink instead.  I was looking forward to that museum and learning some history about London, but we were tired and just wanted to sit down and relax for a bit.  I had wanted to visit the Anchor Bankside, so even though it was over a mile away, we decided to head that way.  We walked over the London Bridge (thank goodness it wasn’t falling down!) and down to the Anchor pub.  This place opened in the early 1600’s and is considered one of the oldest taverns in London.  It is located right on the south bank of the Thames and has a huge outdoor seating area, making it the perfect place for a drink on this cool summer afternoon.

DH had a mission to visit as many pubs as possible during his time in London, so this was our first of many drinks at pubs.  I was very excited to learn that every pub we visited had at least one cider on tap!  Given the choice between beer and cider, I will pick cider every time, so I was thrilled that it was so readily served in London!  This cider was definitely my favorite of all the ciders I had… it was a berries and cherries cider!

Another thing that I loved about many of the pubs in London was the buildings were so pretty!  They often had fun, bright paint colors and beautiful colorful flowers featured somewhere on the building, and they were all begging me to take a photo of their exteriors (so you will see many pub photos in the coming days! Haha)

By the time we finished our drinks, it was a little after 5pm and we were starting to get hungry.  We could have stayed at Anchor for dinner, but decided we wanted to explore someplace different so I checked my Google Map to see what was nearby.  Another pub I had wanted to visit was about a one mile walk away, but it would be a scenic walk along the river and across a bridge so we decided to head over there.  I’m not surprised that we had such high step counts every day of this trip considering how often I looked at my map, said “Oh, that’s only a mile away” and we walked there!  All those one mile walks add up fast!!

On the way, we walked past Shakespeare’s Globe Theater.  I considered trying to get tickets to a show one night but we just didn’t have enough days for all the things I wanted to do, so that will have to wait for a future trip to London.

We crossed the Thames via the Blackfriars Railway Bridge.  Right next to it is a bridge used for the train tracks.  That bridge looks really funky and has a great view looking further to the right towards the other bridges crossing the river.  I didn’t realize this at the time, but we could have used our unlimited ride metro passes to enter this station and walk along the platform and see the view/take photos essentially for free.  Oh well, we’ll add that as one more thing to do next time we visit London!

Just a block north of the river after crossing the bridge, we reached our dinner destination: The Black Friar.  This pub was built in 1875 on the site of a former medieval Dominican friary, and much of the architecture reflects that.  As we approached the pub, we could tell it was extremely popular with the locals as there were hundreds of people standing outside, enjoying a pint after work. 

Notice the black statue of a friar overlooking the courtyard.  This was another example of the interesting exterior decorations on the pubs in London.

Funny enough, when we went inside, there were only a handful of people standing at the bar ordering drinks, and nearly all of the tables in the restaurant were empty!  I guess everyone was just standing outside with their drinks and not interested in having dinner?  To be fair, it was not even 6pm yet so we were definitely early for the dinner rush.

The hostess took us to a table at the back of the pub in this amazing room with marbled stone walls and tiled mosaics on the arched ceiling with funny little black stone sculptures on the walls. 

We didn’t take much time to look over the menu because we both knew what we wanted for dinner… fish and chips!

Since there were so few people eating at the pub, our food came out very quickly.  I’m not quite sure what I was expecting because I have had fish and chips many times in the States, and this was pretty much the same thing.  The fish was a nice, big piece, and it was fried to a crispy perfection (as were the chips, but most of them are hiding under the fish in the photo), and the waitress brought us a bottle of malt vinegar so I could eat it the proper British way!

So, do you remember how extremely hot it was while we were in Paris?  The high temperature was over 90 degrees every day we were there, and we were hot and sweaty pretty much 24 hours a day for 6 days straight.  We were greatly looking forward to visiting London as it was forecast to be cooler.  Well imagine our surprise when it was so cool that we were shivering in our shorts and t-shirts!!  We were going on a walking tour tonight along the Thames River, so if we were this cold at 7:30pm before the sun set, we knew we wouldn’t last long at the walking tour which started at 9:15pm if we didn’t go back to the hotel and get changed.  We weren’t planning to go back to the hotel until after the tour at the end of the night, but we had enough time and an unlimited ride metro pass, so why not?  We took the Tube back to the hotel and changed into jeans, and we brought a light sweater for me and a light jacket for DH in case we got cold in our short-sleeve shirts.

We took the Tube back down to the south bank, and this was the beautiful scene as we exited the station:

I just loved how the sunset reflected on the windows, and the colorful flags hanging overhead made for a great photo!

We also stopped to look at this statue of Nelson Mandela

As I’ve mentioned, tonight’s evening activity was a 2.5 hour free walking tour along the south bank of the Thames River to see the nighttime skyline and learn a bit of history about the city.  The tour was offered through Free Tours by Foot, the same company we had great experiences with in New Orleans, Chicago, San Francisco, and New York.  It wasn’t exactly ideal to take this tour tonight considering we had a one hour time zone change coming from Paris, so our bodies felt like it was an hour later, plus we had already had a very long day of travel and touring.  It sounded like a fun tour, and they only offered it two days a week, with the other option being Monday night when we already had a 12-hour bus tour booked and knew we would be too tired to do this tour afterwards.  We figured that since it was a free tour, we would show up at the starting point and stay with the tour as long as we could, and if we got too tired, we would leave early. 

The tour met in Jubilee Gardens, a small park near the London Eye.  By the way, we decided not to ride in the London Eye.  We have been in the High Roller Ferris Wheel in Las Vegas, which is basically the same thing so we’ve already had that experience.  We could see the views from the Sky Garden for free, so the London Eye didn’t seem like a good way to spend our time or money.  Yes, you get a better view of Parliament and Big Ben from the London Eye, but those buildings were all covered in scaffolding so there wasn’t much to see.  Maybe if we go back to London in the future and if all the buildings are exposed and if the weather is perfectly clear, we might consider riding the London Eye.  We’ll see!

Anyway, this was about as close as we got to the London Eye on this trip.

Our tour guide’s name was Matt and he moved to London from Poland a few years ago.  Matt was a great guide, offering lots of funny anecdotes and interesting information about the sites along the Thames.  I really enjoyed taking this tour in the evening and getting to see some of the activity along the river at night, and of course the buildings all looked so beautiful in the twilight glow.  There were about 30 people on the tour with us, so it was probably the biggest group I’ve had for walking tour.

Our first stop was to see Parliament and Big Ben from across the river.  In the foreground, you can see the pier where our tour boat docked earlier this afternoon to let more people onto our already-crowded sightseeing boat.

Turning in the other direction, we could see Hungerford Bridge and Golden Jubilee Bridges, with Charing Cross Station glowing in red in the distance.

This was not a part of the tour, but we walked past this huge skate park under a terrace for the building above.  I looked it up and this skate park was built in the 1970’s. 

We continued walking along the river, stopping every few minutes so Matt could tell us a story about London’s history.  I wished those barges weren’t in the river because they were blocking a beautiful scene of St. Paul’s Cathedral and the City of London!

The red bridge in the foreground is Blackfriars Railway Bridge, where we walked over the river before to get to dinner.  The building with the long slant on its right side is The Cheese Grater, the one with the sharp slant towards the top right side is The Scalpel, and the funky building on the far right is The Walkie Talkie (with the Sky Garden up on its roof).

As the sun set and the sky got darker, the buildings looked even more beautiful!

Standing in the same spot, I turned to the left to take this photo.  This is the train station bridge at night, so you can imagine how pretty the view is from here!

People often confuse Tower Bridge and London Bridge.  I showed some photos of Tower Bridge from the river cruise earlier this afternoon.  It is the one with the two towers!  London Bridge is a fairly boring bridge during the day, but at night, it is lit up with bright colors.  It was so pretty to see the colors reflecting on the river!

By this point in the tour, the temperatures dipped down to the low 50’s and the wind was blowing so strongly that it was hard to stand still enough to take a good photo!  Those light jackets we brought along were not cutting it and everyone on the tour was shaking because it was so cold!  Luckily, Matt took us on a detour away from the river, so the buildings helped to block the wind, but it was still very cold! 

We passed this mural of Shakespeare.  This is one of the things I love about walking tours… we would have never found this spot on our own.

Around the corner from that mural, Matt showed us The Clink Prison Museum, which used to be a medieval prison.  It is located in a back alley one block from the river, but again, we would never have seen that if not for the walking tour.  It was now 10:45pm and I was so exhausted I could barely keep my eyes open.  The next stop on the tour was going to be out on London Bridge to see the view of the Tower Bridge lit up at night, but I was just way too cold and tired to continue on.  We told Matt we needed to leave and tipped him for is efforts.  The London Bridge Underground station was close by, so we walked over there to head back to our hotel.

Exiting at Kings Cross Station, I was so happy they had an escalator because I really didn’t have the strength to walk up all those stairs!  It was amazing how clean the Underground stations were in London.  Having lived in New York City for six years, I don’t think I ever saw a subway station this clean!

We got back to our hotel around 11:30pm (which felt like 12:30am thanks to the time zone change), and we were fast asleep within minutes of hitting the pillows!

Fitbit Daily Summary… Steps: 24,738,  Miles: 11.97,  Flights of Stairs: 24 (had I lasted for the end of the walking tour, that would have tipped me over 25,000 steps and over 12 miles today… soooo close!)