Saturday, March 16, 2019

Europe 2018 - Part 2: Underneath The Lovely London Sky

Click on any of the photos to enlarge them. They will still be in the same tab and you can easily click out of them to continue reading the report!



Welcome back to the Europe trip, for the large London update!

London is my favorite city I've ever been to. I can't think of any time I was disappointed with the city throughout all four days I was there. There's just so much vibrant culture, sightseeing, tourist attractions, shows, wonderful people, memories being made at every corner, history, hot young women... yeah you get it. (forget I said that last part =) )


Day 1 - The arrival and introductions

Right after we arrived, we, of course, took a nice train ride from Gatwick to London Victoria Station (in case you didn't know, Gatwick Airport is about 30 miles south of the actual city) and the train ride was a nice little teaser to see how beautiful the country is, even if it was all farmlands and small neighborhoods. Once we were passing by some small buildings, and the man on the intercom said, "Now entering London Victoria Station," I knew it was time for the real treat.

Side note - Google Maps really helped me with making this trip report. For those of you who don't know, if you leave your location on 24/7 (like I do), there is a setting in Google Maps on the triple-bar menu that says 'Your timeline' and it keeps track of your history at every place you've visited.

Once we got into the station, we immediately grabbed a quick snack at a Burger King in the station. While I generally don't eat there, I came to figure out that food in Europe is far more well done than in America. So I actually liked the Burger King meal for once. Soon enough, we were back on the train to Battersea Park.

When we were in London, we stayed at a lovely little flat in the neighborhood Battersea Park. As an enthusiast, this park is legendary for what in my opinion is the worst coaster accident in history - the Big Dipper crash. Back in 1972, Battersea Park had a classic wooden coaster called the Big Dipper, and the chain lift failed, causing the train to crash backwards into another train in the station. I believe this is the only coaster crash in history to have more than 1 casualty. I didn't really go into Battersea Park at all, but I had that in mind. The flat was incredibly nice. It had just enough rooms for us to live in and we never felt cramped even though it was small, and some small things like the internet connection and a widescreen TV were nice.

Because of the time change, it was only about 2:00 PM once we all finally got settled, so since we had so much daylight to burn, we took our first glances at London at our own pace for our first ever European sightseeing tour.

We walked back to the Battersea Station and took it back to Victoria (the third train ride of the day!) and got out into the city, before buying a London Bus Pass. First ever ride in a Double Decker Bus! =)

So 5 hours were spent walking and riding around London at our own pace. We mostly used it to sightsee and take in the city, but there was the occasional culture stop, such as St. Paul's Cathedral and Buckingham Palace. The former has been used in many movies and it an icon on so many different levels, and it was a beautiful piece of England that's still here many centuries later.

You might be asking why I don't have any photos from this day, but that's because of jetlag. I was so damn tired this entire time, and during some of our last bus rides, I almost passed out. I think I actually did towards the end, but was awoken by my family once we arrived in Cardinal Place for dinner. I can't remember the name of the restaurant, but it was a busy sit-down place with some good, fancy food. Finally, we took the train back to Battersea Station and relaxed the rest of that evening.


Day 2 - Tower of London, more delicious food and sightseeing, and a royal ritual

Get ready, everyone, here you'll finally find some photos!

Because of staying awake for about 38 hours on end (from waking up the day of the flight through the time change and a full day in London) wasn't what I was hoping, I hit the hay early the last night and was able to sleep in due to our itinerary.

But the first stop was possibly my favorite in the whole city, the Tower of London.


Look at it's beauty!

It was a quick 20 minute journey from the flat after a nice breakfast that we packed with us from home (Cracklin' Oat Bran just screams European vacation, right?) and we got a chance to enjoy the nice London skyline for our walk over before we came upon the first historic attraction of the trip; the Tower of London.

The main portion of this part of the trip was the tour, with the great guide, Barney the Beefeater. He was informative as we walked around the grounds and got up close and personal with some ancient artifacts, and managed to pack in lots of good jokes and humor along the way. We even got a religious experience inside the tower's church!


Here he is, complete with his costume!

As amazing as the whole thing was, it was pretty crowded, especially for a Thursday.

I'm sorry I don't have more photos, but I was just so enamored in everything that happened, it didn't cross my mind.

It was an amazing tour and enthusiast or not, I recommend anyone with a pulse to visit when they're in London.

After that, I took some cool photos as we waited for our lunch to be made.


Ah, the Tower Bridge. Who can forget that?

There was a nice little mini-beach here but unfortunately we couldn't find any ways to access it.

Tower Bridge with more of London's skyline

Lastly, here is the whole thing in all it's glory!


A little note on London's food - I said earlier it's incredibly well done, and here's the case in point. Simple fish sticks, from a not super well known restaurant, was served completely fresh and warm without question, and it was prepared faster than most fast food joints here in America!

After lunch, we spent the rest of the day wandering and exploring London at our own pace.


This is Leadenhall Market - one of the biggest shopping centers in London and was even used for Diagon Alley in the first movie, The Philosopher/Sorcerer's Stone!

Speaking of Harry Potter, because my entire family is a huge fan of the whole franchise, we had to find some of the locations used in the movies.

Speaking more of Harry Potter, Part 3 of the Europe Trip Report will be the Warner Bros. Studio Tour - Harry Potter movie artifacts to your heart's content!

Which exact buildings from Gringotts were inspired by these escapes my memory at this time, but I'm sure the internet has a list somewhere. This one looks a little like Ollivanders, doesn't it?

A little bit more walking brought us to the second stop of the Peterson family tour - St. Dunstan East Church Garden! This isn't something from Harry Potter, but the church was bombed a LOT in World War II, so it was a historical attraction for us.

I know this isn't a Harry Potter stop as I said, but this looks a little like the brick wall that is an entrance to Diagon Alley in the movies, doesn't it?

The whole church was beautiful, and the area in the middle has loads of greenery and benches that has been added since the war. Even though it's very sad that a church was destroyed like this, the ruins are a relaxing place to just take a nap, or have a long chat with a friend.

Although you can't see it in the photo, the piece of metal in the middle is a memorial to the city of London in the war.

A five-minute walk east brought us to the third destination - Tower Hill! Namesake from the London Bridge, of course.

The whole location dates back to the 600s AD and has undergone the survival of many parts of the city's history, including several executions on the spot. While nothing too special or the most memorable moment of the trip for me, it was a nice little place.

Tower Hill is home to an Underground station as well, so we took the subway (we took the subway a LOT for transportation this entire trip - London public transportation is several times better than that of America) for a nice 15 minute ride over to Westminster Station, and got off for a short rock to our fourth destination of the day - a Royal Guard ceremony!

It was really cool. We got to watch all the rituals of the Queen's guards and their horses who were unexpectedly hilarious; they went to all the right positions, but they all acted bored and did a lot of random things in place, like moving their head all around, clopping their hooves in place, it was memorable enough to watch the guard do their thing, but I didn't expect humor!


Follow the leader, the leader, the leader...

As he was walking around, he gave a little speech about something which escapes my mind at this time.

Then at this point, he started to call out the rest of his lads.

The local cops always show up... just in case. Nice to be in a country that knows how to use their assault weapons for good reasons. =(

Oop, here they come!



Check out this video I shot of the whole ceremony, including cheeky horses =) (the rest of the guards come in at 4:52)

Mini rant - the crowd control for these ceremonies isn't the best. These children just randomly appeared in front of me, and neither their parents or anyone else seemed to care. So be sure to know where to watch if you do this. This is also why my video stopped abruptly.


After the Guards, we were planning on making the Churchill War Rooms the fifth destination of the day, but as you can see here, the lines were spilling out of the entrance (even in London this happens) and they weren't selling Priority Passes because it was late enough in the day =( (we were planning to go at about 4:00 PM, but another note - a lot of attractions in England everywhere like to close early, and most don't usually stay open past 6:00 PM)

After that, we just went back to our flat, so we walked to St. James Station and took a quick train back to Victoria Station (this is the main station hub of the area our flat was in, Battersea Park, so we got to know it very well)

As we switched trains at Victoria, we came across this band that was just performing in the middle of the station. Being a longtime Trumpet player and in band for almost 4 years, I love seeing street performers like this.

Back at the flat, eating our dinner that we picked up at Victoria (can't remember what it was) we brainstormed what we could do with our evening. Earlier in the day, my sister picked up some fliers as we were walking around the city, we chose to head back in the city for one of London's favorite evening attractions, the Ghost Bus Tour.

I know this is a pretty bad photo, but you can kind of see the curtains in the bus, and to fit the theme, the whole thing was painted black (interior and exterior), and while I didn't get any more photos on the tour because they wouldn't be very high quality, I can say that all the stories they told of death around every corner we turned were both informative and some wild to the point of being humorous. Also one of the tour "assistants" played the part of being possessed at a certain point and it did kinda scare me. It was all very well done, however, recommended if you have time to burn in the evening.

Seems a bit funny that they would name a street after a chicken, or... you know, never mind. =)

I'll end this update with a bit of European art =)

Thanks for reading the first big update! It took way too long (3 months) to finally complete but I'll be sure to get more updates (as many as possible!) from the 2018 coaster season done before the 2019 coaster season begins for me.