We walked a lot again on Wednesday. first, we hopped on a bus to get to the churchill museum and war rooms. it was drizzly, so good to be up on the top of the double decker bus. that’s the london eye in the background on the left, and that’s the back of westminster abbey.
big ben, of course. lots of protesters in tents were lined around the square there. i can’t remember what they were protesting, exactly, but it wouldn’t be much fun in the rain.
we had to jump off the bus at the last minute because we’d kind of forgotten where the war rooms might be, but luckily we got off in time. the war rooms were all underground, so as to be safer from the bombs, and they were kind of interesting, but we didn’t listen to all of the many audios about them. we did spend lots of times in the museum about churchill’s life – it was really interactive and interesting, full of all kinds of cool stuff. this place hadn’t been high on my list of sights but i figured kevin would like it, but i liked it a lot, too, and would highly recommend it .
it had become a beautiful day by the time we emerged, and we headed over to st. james park, which was close by. this is one of the gates near buckingham castle.
st. james park, such pretty flowers.
the front of the castle.
i had been really, really eager to go on the london eye, and this is a great shot of it.
we hopped on a bus at trafalgar square and got off at st. paul’s cathedral. we didn’t feel like going inside, but instead we wanted to walk across the millenium bridge.
i gave some money to the headless guy, and in the video you can see him waving at me.
now i’m busy videotaping from the millenium bridge, which is fairly new, a cool pedestrian bridge which was jam-packed cause it was such a gorgeous day. maybe it’s always jam-packed; i don’t know, since we just went there the one time.
that’s the london bridge off in the distance.
you might remember the millenium bridge in the opening of harry potter #7 – people are walking on it and it starts undulating and lots of people die. that didn’t happen to us, luckily.
this is what the bridge looked like from the other side. we found a nice little cafe on the south bank, and shared a big cheese platter.
we walked down the bank to the huge IMAX theater to go see the very last harry potter in 3D. we’d already seen it once, but i have to say that it was one of the highlights of our trip.
i know, it’s kind of lame, isn’t it, that seeing a movie for the second time was the best part of the trip? well, it wasn’t the VERY best part, but it was very, very cool. i’d ordered our tickets online, and we got to the theater pretty early and it didn’t look like it was going to fill up but by the time it started the place was packed. the seats weren’t cheap, either.
during the entire movie, you could have heard a pin drop. the only noise the entire time was when a book i’d bought slipped down between the seats and the noise sounded VERY VERY LOUD, but they didn’t kick us out or anything.
it was just so great to see the movie SO HUGE, and in 3D, and i’d go back and see it again if i could, but it’s probably not still playing.
it was dark by the time we got out, and we strolled along the south bank some more. there’s big ben and parliament across the shore.
here’s a closeup of the london eye – when we got there, there wasn’t a line, but it was set up for huge crowds – i bet it was a mob scene during the day, and a guidebook said that it was crazy and the wait was long. we debated about going up in it, but decided that there wouldn’t be so much to see at night. by this time we’d had such a full day that it didn’t seem so critical to me anymore to go up in it. maybe next time.
we walked over westminster bridge next to big ben.
i took this picture of big ben with my video camera, and got kind of obsessive about trying to zoom in to the detailing up on the top, as you’ll see if you watch the video.
it was another busy day of sightseeing, and thursday was going to be our last day in london.
ok then,
g.