“Windmills are going to be the death of Scotland and even England if they don’t do something about them. They are ruining the countryside.”
-Donald Trump
Sites/Topics covered in this post (mostly just pictures):
- Duke of York
- Waterloo Park
- Trafalgar Square
- Tower Bridge
- Tower of London
- Doing an Aussie Walk-about
Go-Date: Day 160, Monday, July 1
Lesson Learned: Tip or not to tip. Check your receipts in restaurants sometimes they add a 12.5% service fee (tip) and sometimes they don’t. If you get really good service and enjoy your meal, you may want to leave an extra amount, or just leave it as it is. We’ve found the wait service here better than France, but not as good as Greece, Egypt, or Croatia. Believe it or not, none of them are as good as the US for most sit-down restaurants.
Its funny, but the Brits we’ve talked to raved about how good the service is in the US and how we “really have done well on the customer service bit.” Pat yourself on the backs hospitality industry, now pay your people a decent wage.
Lost in London Walking Day
We had no place in particular to go today, but everything to see. I wear a smart watch, and I had fireworks on my wrist way before lunch today. This means that we’ve gotten our 10,000 steps in before afternoon tea.
This isn’t a big deal, since we top 10,000 steps quite regularly, and probably around 25 flights of stairs daily. This is nothing compared to my days in the ER when an average day saw me do 25,000 steps and around 25 flights of stairs every 12-hour shift (kudos to the nurses, docs, RTs, Imaging Techs, and staff at the hospitals).
Duke of York Diddy
I’ve heard this old English nursery rhyme for decades. I even heard it in a movie or TV show (I’ll be damned if I can recall which one) but today we saw the old dude’s monument. Here’s to the Grand Old Duke.
Oh, the grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.
When they were up, they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only halfway up,
They were neither up nor down
Waterloo Gardens Park
Waterloo Gardens is located within the county of Greater London 3.31 miles North East from the center of London. Its what you might term Park Central for London as its by Hyde Park, Marlborough Gardens (no relation to the Marlborough Man), St. James Park, Buckingham Palace Gardens, and a bit of posh green space called Oliver’s Doggie Pee and Poo Emporium & Runabout. The area is a nice place to get away from concrete and asphalt.
Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square is surrounded by museums, galleries, cultural spaces and historic buildings. It also had a lot of construction going on while we were there. I’m not sure if they were setting up for an event, or it was just general fixing up going on. Trafalgar Square, is the largest square in London, and considered the heart of the city. Ever since the Middle Ages, this area has been a central meeting place. In the middle of the square stands a tall column honoring admiral Nelson.
The square was originally called Charing. Later it became known as Charing Cross, after a memorial cross on the square. The nearby underground station (the ‘tube’) is still named Charing Cross.
From the thirteenth century on the area was the site of the King’s Royal Hawks and later the Royal Mews (stables for Buckingham Palace). In 1812 the Prince Regent – who would later become King George IV – asked architect John Nash to redevelop the area. After much delay work finally started in 1830. Nash had the terrain cleared but he died before his plans were realized and works were halted.
The completion of the National Gallery in 1838 on the north side of the square reignited interest in its redevelopment. A new consisted of two levels separated by a monumental flight of stairs was approved and construction started in 1840. Five years later the square was finally completed. The entire square was roped off and work under way, so we really didn’t stop, we can say we’ve been to Trafalgar Square though.
So, what was this Trafalgar and why should you care? Probably, because if the Brits hadn’t won, you might be speaking French, or at least 1/3 of America might still be part of France.
The Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805) was a naval engagement fought by the British Royal Navy against the combined fleets of the French and Spanish Navies, during the War of the Third Coalition (August–December 1805) of the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815). The victory confirmed the naval supremacy Britain had established during the course of the eighteenth century and put a halt to Napoleon’s plans to conquer England.
Trafalgar Trivia:
- Twenty-seven British ships of the line led by Admiral Lord Nelson aboard HMS Victory defeated thirty-three French and Spanish ships in the battle.
- Nelson famously sailed in the face of naval doctrine of forming two lines and engaging the enemy in a clash of broadsides. Instead, Nelson split his fleet in two, and sailed straight at the French and Spanish lines, cleaving them in half.
- Nelson was fatally wounded by a French sniper as his ship was engaged with the French ship the Redoutable.
- The battle took place in the Atlantic Ocean off the southwest coast of Spain, just west of Cape Trafalgar, near the town of Los Caños de Meca.
- The Franco-Spanish fleet lost twenty-two ships and the British lost none.
- The British possessed an experienced and well-trained corps of naval officers. By contrast, some of the best officers in the French navy had either been executed or had left the service during the early part of the French Revolution.
Hungerford Bridge /Golden Jubilee Bridges.
Our walks continued south and we crossed over the Hungerford Bridge/Golden Jubilee Bridges before looking at the London Eye and continuing East. The bridge has a very boring history, but it’s a cool looking structure and makes for a quick crossing of the Thames river right by the London Eye to the Southbank and Southwark neighborhoods.
The South Bank is an entertainment and commercial district in central London, next to the River Thames opposite the City of Westminster. We breezed on east into Southwark, and then finally to the neighborhood by the Tower Bridge. Throughout its history, this area has functioned as an entertainment district outside the formal regulation of the City of London which included theatres (including the Globe Theater), prostitution and bear-baiting (setting dogs to attack a captive bear).
By the 18th century the more genteel entertainment of the pleasure gardens had developed. The current Globe Theatre is located on Bankside, about 230 meters (750 ft) from the original site. The Thames was much wider in Shakespeare’s time and the original Globe was on the riverbank, though that site is now far from the river, and the river-side site for the reconstructed Globe was chosen to recreate the atmosphere of the original theater.
There’s a lot of public open space along the riverside. It’s got a nice wide promenade where you can see up and down the river along with all the historic buildings, like St. Paul’s Cathedral, Somerset House, the Millennium Bridge, and the Temple Church. Since its beginning Southwark was at the lowest bridging point of the Thames in Roman Britain, providing a crossing from Londinium, and for centuries had the only Thames bridge in the area.
The Golden Hinde
Just before you get to the Tower Bridge, you come to a curious business development with a few curiosities hidden amongst them. One of them is the reproduction of an old ship the Golden Hinde. This English galleon, best known for her privateering circumnavigation of the globe between 1577 and 1580, was captained by Sir Francis Drake. There are several copies of this replica around the globe, but this one is a full-sized, still sailable reconstruction containing original pieces of the galleon.
This reproduction was built by traditional methods in Appledore, Devon and launched in 1973. Since then, she has travelled more than 140,000 miles (225,000 km). She sailed from Plymouth on her maiden voyage in late 1974, arriving on 8 May 1975 in San Francisco. In 1979, she sailed to Japan to make the miniseries Shogun, after which she returned to the UK having completed a circumnavigation. In 1984–85, she sailed around the British Isles and then crossed the Atlantic to St Thomas in the Caribbean.
In 1986, she passed through the Panama Canal to sail on to Vancouver, where she was the main attraction in the Marine Plaza at Expo86. In 1987, she began a tour of US coastal cities, spending two years on the Pacific coast. In late 1988, she passed back through the Panama Canal to continue port visits on the Gulf and east coasts of the USA. In 1992, she returned home to the UK and spent the next four years visiting ports in Europe. Since 1996, she has been berthed at St Mary Overie Dock, in Bankside, Southwark, London, where she is open to the public. I had no idea it was here, until we stumbled upon it in our wanderings.
Tower Bridge
The Tower Bridge is a combined bascule and suspension bridge in London, built between 1886 and 1894. The bridge crosses the River Thames close to the Tower of London and has become an iconic symbol of London. Tower Bridge is sometimes confused with London Bridge, situated some 0.5 mi (0.80 km) upstream (of course, London Bridge is not the original. The previous bridge (1831 – 1967) now resides in Lake Havasu City in Arizona.)
A curious trivia rumor about the not above-mentioned bridge, which is definitely NOT the original London Bridge, is that in 1722 congestion was becoming so serious on the bridge that the Lord Mayor decreed that “all carts, coaches and other carriages coming out of Southwark into London City do keep all along the west side of the said bridge: and all carts and coaches going out of the City do keep along the east side of the said bridge.” This has been suggested as one possible origin for the practice of traffic in Britain driving on the left. Blame it on London Bridge.
Now, back to Tower Bridge. As it does for construction of new bridges, an Act of Parliament was passed in 1885 authorizing the bridge’s construction. Construction had to be in a Gothic style. Construction started in 1886 and took eight years, and the bridge was officially opened on 30 June 1894 by the then Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII). The high-level open air walkways between the towers over the river gained an unpleasant reputation as a haunt for prostitutes and pickpockets; as they were only accessible by stairs they were seldom used by regular pedestrians, and were closed in 1910. If you are in London, you should take a walk along the south side of the river and then cross the Thames on foot on the Tower Bridge. The view is spectacular and the sense of history is profound.
Tower of London
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. It was founded towards the end of 1066 as part of the Norman Conquest of England. The White Tower, which gives the entire castle its name, was built by William the Conqueror in 1078 and was a resented symbol of oppression, inflicted upon London by the new ruling elite. The castle was used as a prison from 1100 until 1952, although that was not its primary purpose. A grand palace early in its history, it served as a royal residence. As a whole, the Tower is a complex of several buildings set within two concentric rings of defensive walls and a moat. There were several phases of expansion, mainly under Kings Richard I, Henry III, and Edward I in the 12th and 13th centuries. The general layout established by the late 13th century remains.
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, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Elizabeth Throckmorton. This use has led to the phrase “sent to the Tower” which would not be a good think. Just think of Ned Stark in Game of Thrones.
We didn’t take a tour this time, as we’ve already done that and the crowds were just unbearable. So we just smiled, walked on by and found a pub for a drink. That’s how our day went and we saw lots of great things for not really scheduling any museum, tour, or venue for the day. It’s Good to be Lost.