October 9, 2019. Trip Oversight
“The cool thing about being famous is traveling. I have always wanted to travel across seas, like to Canada and stuff.”
-Britney Spears
Top 12 Trip Picks
• Pyramids of Giza
• Parthenon – Athens, Greece
• Meteora, Greece (Kalabaka)
• Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia
• West Cork, Ireland
• Banks of the Seine, Paris, France
• London along the Thames
• Luxor, Egypt
• Dublin, Ireland
• Peloponnese, Greece
• Dubrovnik/Trogir/Zadar, Croatia
• Cappadocia, Turkey
Lesson Learned: To Tip or not to Tip, that is the question. You normally tip for service in London, but be sure to 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.
At least its not like Egypt where they expect a tip (bakeesh) for everything, including saying good morning. Its different everywhere you travel.
It’s 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.
None are so Old as Those Who Have Outlived Enthusiasm
Seven months on the road and countless sites seen, cities lived in, countries visited, and cultures experienced leave you with countless memories. The experiences fill you with fresh opinions, unexpected thrills, new friendships, and real-life exposure to images and places we’ve dreamed about our entire lives, and twice as many more that we never expected. It also leaves you with a yearning to see more. Ellen and I were on the road for 213 days, eight countries (not counting Iceland, or Bosnia-Herzegovina), we slept in 51 different beds, visited 22 UNESCO World Heritage sites, and explored who knows how many towns and cities.
But we’ve also got a list of the things we’ve seen, and places we really enjoyed. Friends continually ask what we enjoyed the most on our journey. That’s tough to decide, or rank from first to last. That’s like asking “What’s your favorite food.” or “Who is your favorite child?”, give me a break. Our trip experience was cumulative, and difficult to separate the experience into discrete events. Much of what we did or saw built upon the events of the previous day or week, and blended over our travels to paint our memories. Here are a few of our favorite memories from our travels in 2019. You may have heard of these places before, but here’s a list of experiences we’d do again. Today I’ll review, London along the Thames.
Just Lead an Interesting Life
London, without a doubt is the most international city we’ve ever visited. Dating back to the British Empire, people from all over the world emigrated to England giving this place a global feel. Perhaps that’s why there is such a Brexit fever amongst so many people here. Even though we really didn’t meet that many English that admitted being in favor of it. So, I guess its kind of like the U.S. in the very conservative people live outside the large cities like London.
A few things you must do while in London (Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, British Museum, etc.) and then there are some things that you should do because you will regret not being there if you don’t, such as:
Tate Museum
The Tate Museum is an institution that houses, in a network of four art museums, the United Kingdom’s national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. The gallery was founded in 1897, as the National Gallery of British Art.
The Tate Gallery displays the collection of British art from 1500 to the present day; Tate Modern, also in London, which houses the Tate’s collection of British and international modern and contemporary art from 1900 to the present day.
Southwark
Southwark is a district of Central London just south of the Thames River. I’m not sure exactly where Southwark ends and the South Warf begins, but this funky neighborhood goes all the way out to the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London across the river. It 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. Today, there are dozens of bridges in this city. Far more than we have in Washington D.C.
Its entertainment district goes back to the 16th century when Shakespare’s Globe Theatre (which stood 1599–1642)was dishing out irreverent plays mocking all of the very proper British institutions of the time. It’s still there and Ellen and I went to the Merry Wives of Windsor on the night we depart London for Ireland.
It’s now seeing a resurgence of popularity with the Millennial crowd with the area known as the Borough, which has an eclectic covered and semi-covered market and numerous food and drink venues as well as the skyscraper The Shard. It’s really a cool area to wander about on a Saturday or any morning for that matter.
Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square is surrounded by museums, galleries, cultural spaces and historic buildings. Plus, it’s within walking distance of a dozen other sights of Central London. Trafalgar Square, is the largest square in London, and considered the heart of the city.
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). 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. Today, it’s just a cool place to hang out and people watch.
Library of Britain
Across the street from King’s Cross and St. Pancras stations is the Library of Britain. It sounds boring, but it’s not (well it’s not bungie jumping in Costa Rica exciting, or teenie-appealing reef diving on the Great Barrier Reef, but it is historical artifact interesting. This place is a hidden treasure. The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and the largest national library in the world. It is estimated to contain 150–200 million+ items from many countries.
Its’ also a wonderful repository of British documents and historical items. The Library’s collections include around 14 million books, countless (well, I’m sure they have counted them) manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 2000 BCE. In addition to receiving a copy of every publication produced in the UK and Ireland (approximately 8,000 per day).
Some manuscripts in the exhibition include Beowulf, the Lindisfarne Gospels and St Cuthbert Gospel, a Gutenberg Bible, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (King Arthur), Captain Cook’s journal, Jane Austen’s History of England, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and a room devoted solely to Magna Carta, as well as several Qur’ans and Asian items. They also had a lot of Beatles memorabilia. Neat stuff that most people never see.
Sights of Central London
The nice thing about staying in Piccadilly Circus or Soho in London is you are so close to many of the sights you need to visit. The other thing is the city is so very walkable. Leave the hotel, turn left or right and scan the skyline for the sight to see. If you get tired, find an underground station or hop on a bus. It is so easy to get around, and not so expensive, either. If you must, you can call up an Uber or flag down a black cab. It’s really and easy city to visit. A bit crowded, in the summer high season, but it’s nothing compared to Cairo.
Central London is the innermost part of London, spanning several boroughs. Road distances to London are traditionally measured from a central point at Charing Cross (in the City of Westminster), which is marked by the statue of King Charles I at the junction of the Strand, Whitehall and Cockspur Street, just south of Trafalgar Square.
The central area includes within its boundaries Parliament and the Royal Palaces, the headquarters of Government, the Law Courts, the head offices of a very large number of commercial and industrial firms, as well as institutions of great influence in the intellectual life of the nation such as the British Museum, the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery, the University of London, the headquarters of the national ballet and opera.
It also holds numerous parks such as Hyde, St. James, Green Park, Waterloo, Buckingham Palace park, Victoria Tower, and numerous others. So, there is green space within all that concrete, asphalt, and limestone. Lots of sights, and lots of people watching.
Where to stay: I’d recommend Piccadilly or Soho, but anywhere north of the Thames close in is fine. You might stay in Southwark if you are looking for a livelier night scene full of millennials.
How long should you stay: As long as you can, while avoiding June through August.
What to see:
• The Tower of London
• Tower Bridge
• The British Museum
• Buckingham Palace
• Ride the Tube
• Piccadilly Circus & Trafalgar Square
• Windsor Castle
• Victoria and Albert Museum
• Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre
• Big Ben, Parliament & the Shard
• British Library
• 10 Downing Street
• London Theater District
• Westminster Abbey
• The Tate Museum
• Kensington Palace
• Churchill’s War Rooms
• Sherlock Holmes Museum
• Madame Tussauds
• Walk across Abbey Road
• Visit Leicester Square
• Visit Hyde Park
• Platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross Station
• London Eye
Next Up: Luxor, Egypt