After the last few days of travel and one big day out yesterday logging 28,000 steps, a low-key day was in order.
But with only six full days in London planned (and budgeted for), we’re not about to lounge around all day doing nothing.
Our Euro-African Journey (So Far...)
Today, we figured we’d hop on the Southeastern Line once again, get off at London Bridge and take a stroll around “The City” (the Old Town core). Then, we’ll see what we’re up for after that.
After leaving London Bridge station, first stop—Borough Market, so I can get my reusable coffee cup deposit back from yesterday.
Then, it’s over the Thames we go via the Millennium Bridge.
Noe was concerned by how low the river was looking today compared to yesterday. I told him that the Thames here is actually a tidal estuary. We looked it up and discovered that it can rise and fall as much as 23 feet every six hours. That’s an incredible amount of flow in a relatively narrow space.
Next stop, St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Sights like St. Paul’s, Westminster Abbey, and Tower of London are pretty expensive in London. Usually services at St. Paul’s (as with the Abbey) are free to the public, but this is Easter Weekend, making it a bit more complicated.
Fortunately, places like the British Museum and Natural History Museum are free (a change from 30 years ago). So, we’ll definitely be saving time for those.
We resigned ourselves to take in St. Paul’s from the outside—still very impressive!
After a few circles around the cathedral, we thought it might be time to head on over to the West End, but weren’t excited about walking there. No worries, we’ll just hop a double-decker bus.
Back in the day, I always had to make sure I had exact change to throw into the hopper. These days, you just tap your credit card on a box inside (you don’t even need a special transit card).
We made our way upstairs and the boys even found seats right up front.
These fancy “New Routemasters” with their retro lines are nice and all (and are certainly a step up from the ugly boxy things that first took to the road when I was last here 25 years ago). But I still miss the funky old Routemasters (which you do still see around town on occasion).
We passed a sign for Benjamin Franklin’s home in London and Noe had to go see it. It might have been the highlight of his day. I was surprised to discover he spent 16 years here.
I told Noe we’ll have to take him to Philly one day and look for his house there (and Boston, and Paris, the dude got around).
London’s Chinatown. A couple of red-lantern-decked streets with overpriced Dim Sum and noodle shops.
Like most major cities around the globe (outside of China), most of the Chinese diaspora no longer lives in “Chinatown”, so they tend to be long on kitsch and short on soul.
It was tempting to get our Dim Sum fix here, but Lori and I resisted. For lunch today, we had our tastebuds set on something a bit more traditional…
Soho’s Golden Union isn’t one of the more historic Chippies in London, but it’s reported to be one of the best. We ordered up one fish and chips and one sausage and chips.
Like a lot of places in London, Take-Away is cheaper than Dine-In, so we grabbed our food and made our way over to nearby Soho Square.
The fish was HUGE. And delicious.
This mysterious building sits in the middle of Soho Square. We all had our guesses as to what it might be. Noe thought it might the old caretaker’s home. I thought it might be a disused toilet block.
Turns out, we’re not alone. Londoners have a number of theories of their own, from a door to a secret underground passageway to Buckingham Palace to a 17th-century Tudor house.
In reality, the structure was built in 1925 by the power company to hide the electrical substation. During the Blitz, the arrow below was hollowed out, reinforced, and used as a bomb shelter. Today, it’s storage shed for gardening tools.
Speaking of mysterious old objects around Soho, Lori was intent on finding (and taking a picture with) the John Snow Water Pump.
If you don’t have a degree in Public Health, I’ll forgive you for not knowing who John Snow is (I didn’t know until Lori educated me).
This unassuming metal museum piece (not the original, apparently) is considered to be the birthplace of epidemiology, when in the midst of the great Cholera Outbreak of 1854, the English physician, John Snow, suggested removing the handle from the pump, saving countless lives.
Before Snow, the prevailing consensus was that diseases like cholera were spread by fouled air. Snow proved them wrong and changed how we understand hygiene and the spread of disease forever.
As if that weren’t riveting enough for the boys, I thought it might be fun to poke into the Lego store around the corner…
Nope, that’s not happening. Hamley’s next door was the same madness. Looks like Easter weekend is officially upon us!
We nixed that and headed over to Piccadilly Circus where things were a bit more subdued.
I remembered Piccadilly being a bit more impressive. Back in 1996 (and at the age of 16), everything did seem way more impressive.
Before we left, Lori tried to recreate an old photo from my first visit here 30 years ago (almost to the day).
We didn’t have the original picture with us for reference, but I think we managed to get pretty close.
Out with the Floppy Disks, in with the Netflix.
