Day 3 - London Walking Tour (8 April 2016)

A local hot-dog snack (love the bread) at Green Park before the start of the London Walking Tour. Praise God that the weather was cool and breezy - not wet like yesterday. Great for walking!

The girls busied themselves with photo-taking and filming while waiting for the tour guide to come.

The London City walking tour begins!

Buckingham Palace - anticipating the changing of the guards - glad we have a tour guide that showed us the best place to watch and to get up close and personal with the parade that goes with it.

Here are the New Guards coming to relive the Old Guards being preceded by a Band. Instead of crowding the entrance to Buckingham Palace, we lined up at the Mall as they marched down close enough for us to get up close. I tried to get a selfie ... only barely :-) Below is a video snapshot:

 

At St James's Palace - built by Henry VIII on the site of the Hospital of St. James, Westminster. Built largely between 1531 and 1536, St. James's Palace was a residence of kings and queens of England for over 300 years. It remains the official residence of the Sovereign, although, since the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837, the Sovereign has lived at Buckingham Palace. High Commissioners present letters and Ambassadors are still formally accredited to the Court of St. James's for this reason. (We also had a colorful review of the live and the wives of Henry VIII). Despite his "executable" marriage, Henry VIII was credited in turning Britian into a navy superpower, establishing the Church of England and also bringing tennis into the UK.

On the way to the Horse Guards Parade.

At the Horse Guards Building (near Whitehall) - this open area is used for royal parades and ceremonies. Horse Guards Parade was formerly the site of the Palace of Whitehall's tiltyard, where tournaments (including jousting) were held in the time of Henry VIII. It was also the scene of annual celebrations of the birthday of Queen Elizabeth I. The area has been used for a variety of reviews, parades and other ceremonies since the 17th century.

 

10, Downing Street - the official residence of the Prime Minister (which incidentally was a nickname given as a "teacher's pet" reference to a favorite cabinet minister of the King). Located just next to the Horse Guards - now heavily guarded by anything other than horses! So, we were not able to get close enough other than a distant selfie!

 

 
 
Next stop: Westminster Abbey - founded 960. It is steeped in more than a thousand years of history. Benedictine monks first came to this site in the middle of the tenth century, establishing a tradition of daily worship which continues to this day. The Abbey has been the coronation church since 1066 and is the final resting place of seventeen monarchs. The present church, begun by Henry III in 1245, is one of the most important Gothic buildings in the country. 3,300 people buried or commemorated at Westminster Abbey, many of them among the most significant in the nation's history.

  

 

The Houses of Parliament and Elizabeth Tower, commonly called Big Ben, are among London's most iconic landmarks and must-see London attractions. Technically, Big Ben is the name given to the massive bell inside the clock tower, which weighs more than 13 tons (13,760 kg). The Palace of Westminster was destroyed by fire in 1834. In 1844, it was decided the new buildings for the Houses of Parliament should include a tower and a clock. Interesting fact - because of superstitious belief about the letter "X" - it is replaced with "F" instead on the clock face.

 

St Clement Danes is an Anglican church in the City of Westminster, London. It is situated outside the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand. Although the first church on the site was reputedly founded in the 9th century by the Danes, the current building was completed in 1682 by Sir Christopher Wren. Wren's building was gutted during the Blitz and not restored until 1958, when it was adapted to its current function as the central church of the Royal Air Force. Section of the wall where it was damaged in World War 2 was preserved as it is because people kept coming to treat as a memorial.

The Royal Courts of Justice, commonly called the Law Courts, is a court building in London which houses both the High Court and Court of Appeal of England and Wales. Designed by George Edmund Street, who died before it was completed, it is a large grey stone edifice in the Victorian Gothic style built in the 1870s and opened by Queen Victoria in 1882. It is one of the largest courts in Europe. Although it was built not too long ago (relatively), it was intentionally designed to look older than it is because of Queen Victoria's liking for medieval architecture.

  

This is the original Twinings Tea shop that has been there for over 300 years. In 1837, Queen Victoria granted Twinings its first Royal Warrant for tea – she appointed Twinings as supplier of teas to her household. Twinings has had the honour of supplying every successive British Monarch to date.

 

Lots, lots of walking but no sweat because of pleasant weather :-)

We are now entering the one-square mile area of the City of London - as distinguished from the City of Westminster. This is the actually original London and it comes with its own police force, city council etc. The streets here are noticeably narrower and the buildings are built so much closer to each other due to poorer town planning compared to the City of Westminster.

 

 

At Dr.Samuel Johnson's house courtyard - a charming 300-year-old townhouse, nestled amongst a maze of courts and alleys in the historic City of London. Samuel Johnson, the writer and wit, lived and worked here in the middle of the eighteenth century, compiling his great Dictionary of the English Language in the Garret. He had an affection for cats - in particular he has one favorite, he was quoted as saying - " he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed." - this is Hodge, the favored cat, whose favorite food is oysters. Amazingly, during Johnson's time, seafood is the food for commoners - so even in prison, lobsters are commonly served! And Johnson was credited for his "humility" in being seen to be in the seafood market place buying meals for Hodge.

 

 

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is one of a number of pubs in London to have been rebuilt shortly after the Great Fire of 1666. (There has been a pub at this location since 1538). All the monarchs who have reigned in England during the pub's time are written to the right of the door. The literary figures Oliver Goldsmith, Mark Twain, Alfred Tennyson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, P. G. Wodehouse and Dr. Johnson are all said to have been 'regulars'. Charles Dickens had been known to use the establishment frequently, and due to the pub's gloomy charm it is easy to imagine that Dickens modelled some of his darker characters there. The pub is famously alluded to in Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities.

 

St Bride's Church is a church in the City of London, England. The building's most recent incarnation was designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1672 in Fleet Street in the City of London, though Wren's original building was largely gutted by fire during the London Blitz in 1940. Due to its location in Fleet Street, it has a long association with journalists and newspapers. The tiered structure right on top has been credited to be the inspiration of wedding cakes!

 

 

For more than 1,400 years, a Cathedral dedicated to St Paul has stood at the highest point in the City.
Frequently at the centre of national events, traditions have been observed here.The present Cathedral, the masterpiece of Britain's most famous architect Sir Christopher Wren, is at least the fourth to have stood on the site. It was built between 1675 and 1710, after its predecessor was destroyed in the Great Fire of London, and services began in 1697. This was the first Cathedral to be built after the English Reformation in the sixteenth-century, when Henry VIII removed the Church of England from the jurisdiction of the Pope and the Crown took control of the life of the church.

The Royal Exchange in London was founded in the 16th century by the merchant Thomas Gresham to act as a centre of commerce for the City of London. It has twice been destroyed by fire and subsequently rebuilt. The present building was designed by William Tite in the 1840s. The site was notably occupied by the Lloyd's insurance market for nearly 150 years. Today the Royal Exchange contains offices, luxury shops and restaurants.

Next to the Royal Exchange is The Bank of England, formally the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694, it is the second oldest central bank in the world (after Switzerland).

Amazingly, in the land of tea and biscuits, the London walk was peppered with numerous Starbucks!

 

 

The Monument to the Great Fire of London, more commonly known simply as the Monument, is a Doric column in the City of London, near the northern end of London Bridge, which commemorates the Great Fire of London. It is the tallest stone column in the world. The fire began in a baker’s house in Pudding Lane on Sunday 2nd September 1666 and finally extinguished on Wednesday 5th September, after destroying the greater part of the City. Although there was little loss of life, the fire brought all activity to a halt, having consumed or severely damaged thousands of houses, hundreds of streets, the City’s gates, public buildings, churches and St. Paul’s Cathedral. The only buildings to survive in part were those built of stone, like St. Paul’s and the Guildhall. As part of the rebuilding, it was decided to erect a permanent memorial of the Great Fire near the place where it began. Sir Christopher Wren, Surveyor General to King Charles II and the architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and his friend and colleague, Dr Robert Hooke, provided a design for a colossal Doric column in the antique tradition. They drew up plans for a column containing a cantilevered stone staircase of 311 steps leading to a viewing platform. This was surmounted by a drum and a copper urn from which flames emerged, symbolizing the Great Fire. The Monument, as it came to be called, is 61 metres high (202 feet) – the exact distance between it and the site in Pudding Lane where the fire began.

 

 

 

Here we are at Tower Bridge (not the London Bridge!) - (built 1886–1894) is a combined bascule and suspension bridge in London. The bridge crosses the River Thames close to the Tower of London and has become an iconic symbol of London.

 

Finally - after 8km of walking through London - we have reached our final stop at the Tower of London - officially Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic castle located on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, separated from the eastern edge of the square mile of the City of London by the open space known as Tower Hill. It was founded towards the end of 1066 as part of the Norman Conquest of England. The Tower of London has played a prominent role in English history. It was besieged several times and controlling it has been important to controlling the country. The Tower has served variously as an armoury, a treasury, a menagerie, the home of the Royal Mint, a public records office, and the home of the Crown Jewels of England. The peak period of the castle's use as a prison was the 16th and 17th centuries, when many figures who had fallen into disgrace, such as Elizabeth I before she became queen, were held within its walls. This use has led to the phrase "sent to the Tower". Despite its enduring reputation as a place of torture and death, popularised by 16th-century religious propagandists and 19th-century writers, only seven people were executed within the Tower before the World Wars of the 20th century. Executions were more commonly held on the notorious Tower Hill to the north of the castle.

 

 

 

What a gratifying way to end the London Walking Tour - by having a Sit Down Dinner! Many thanks to the Lims for booking (months in advance) at Dishoom - opened early last century by Zoroastrian immigrants from Iran. They are called popularly called the Old Irani Cafes of Bombay. This treat was dedicated by the Lims to Eliza's soon travel to Asbury University for her studies. Thank you very much - in the words of Eliza and Eunice - "This is the best Indian food I have ever tasted!" To that, I agree :-)