Good evening from the cozy confines of our splendid West London base
camp. Renee is currently sleeping, passing out literally minutes after
we returned to our hotel room after over 12 hours out and about. Upon
leaving our hotel this morning, we took the Central Tube line eastward
to Westminster, where after climbing the stairs out of the Tube station,
were greeted by the massive and imposing figure of Big Ben above us.
Very rarely does one get excited about a simple timekeeping device, but
my word, this clock tower is gargantuan, and makes it presence felt even
moreso at the top of the hour, letting out a tremendously loud "boom"
of a chime. The sound was almost haunting, eerily reminiscent of a
warning bell of some kind. Departing Big Ben, we walked down several
streets, and eventually, after dodging innumerable amounts of French and
Italian schoolkids on field trips, made our way to Westminster Abbey. The
entire structure of the Abbey is sprawling, and for a few minutes left
us confused as to what was what, until we realized that our entire field
of view was taken up by various portions of the Abbey. We didn't go
inside and do any sort of tours, but snapped several photographs.
Departing the Abbey, we headed to the Churchill War rooms site/museum,
the war rooms are the actual physical location where Winston Churchill,
his staff members, and aides ran the war effort while London was bombed
by the Nazis. Upon entering the museum, you are handed a device which
resembled an early 1990's cellular telephone. Various points in the
museum are marked with numbers, and you punch in the corresponding
number into the phone-like device and hear the audio that is associated
with that particular exhibit. The museum itself is incredibly detailed
and shared a tremendous amount of personal details regarding Churchill
and his staff members, one could easily spend 5 or 6 hours in this
museum. Leaving the war rooms, we headed northwest toward The Golden
Hind for some authentic fish and chips. Just as we left the war rooms, a
light rain began to fall, intermittently, and gradually increased as we
headed northward toward the Golden Hind. As you'll notice on this
walking path map,
the Golden hind is a fair distance from the war rooms as far as walking
goes, upon reaching Oxford Street, the rain began to fall at a moderate
intensity, and thunder commenced. One thing I must say about London,
the streets are not well-marked at all, American-style street signs are
absent, and the primary markers for street names seems to be small
black/white signs on the sides of buildings. Combine this difficulty in
seeing the posted signs, the increasing rainfall, and the fact that
Oxford Street was JAM-PACKED (come to find out, this is apparently the
busiest and most popular shopping district in the entirety of London!),
it became quite difficult to figure out where we going. After purchasing
an umbrella to try and battle the falling rain, we finally located
Marleybone lane, and headed north toward the restaurant, shortly
thereafter the skies opened up, and it began to absolutely pour, and
shortly after that, hail began to fall, yes, yes the irony of this
situation is certainly not lost on us. Two meteorologists, both who love
thunderstorms, both who've done extensive storm chasing, actively
seeing out bad weather, were now getting poured on and hailed on in the
middle of London. Renee feels I am to blame for this, as those who know
me well are quite aware of my fondness for dreary, cloudy, and rainy
weather, and it's quite possible this was some sort of 'grand balancing
out'. Finally making it to the restaurant, we both had a small fish and
chips platter, eating quickly, and then hurrying back to the Tube
station to make the venture into North London and to the Emirates
stadium. After 30 minutes or so we arrived at the Arsenal tube station, to what in my
heavily-biased opinion is the pinnacle of London, the grandiose Emirates
Stadium. The stadium itself is a work of art, magnificent in every way,
and certainly the finest sporting facility I've ever seen
personally....
Given that it's getting quite late
(we'll be waking at 5:30am tomorrow), and this blog entry has become
extremely long, I'm going to end it for now. I'll summarize our tour of
the Emirates Stadium (which was well-worth the money, and nothing short
of incredible!) in tomorrow's post.
Goodnight!
No comments:
Post a Comment