London Bridge is Falling Down

London, United Kingdom

London, as we know it, is actually made up of the City of Westminster and the City of London. The City of Westminster is where all the palaces, governmental buildings and other more recent things (recent as in still hundreds and hundreds of years old).

Tower of London

The City of London – where we visited yesterday – is the older, original part of London. The City of London still had cobblestone streets and looked much older than anywhere else we had been. While there, we saw St. Paul’s Cathedral (originally built in 602). We were too cheap to buy tickets, but we did loiter around the inside of the entrance and listen to some Pope chants – which Josh particularly enjoyed.

Next, we walked over to the Tower of London – where all the famous torture stories took place. We had wanted to go inside, but when we saw that tickets were 20 pounds per person, the outside began to look awesome enough on its own. From there we walked down to the Tower Bridge.

This is actually not London Bridge, which is the original and much less grand bridge located a little ways up the Thames River. London Bridge is where they used to string up the beheaded heads of traitors, as a warning to those entering the city.

Tower bridge, the iconic bridge everyone thinks of in London, was really beautiful. I think this was Josh’s favorite thing to see so far (I can’t be sure, since he is still asleep while I’m typing this up. This is the first morning my jet lag hasn’t had me up at 4 am – so I don’t want to wake him). We spent quite a long time just walking around on the bridge and taking photos.

Tea Time at Waterstone

Earlier in the morning, on our way to the City of London, we stopped on Regent Street. It’s kind of like the 5th Ave. of London with lots of expensive shops and designer stores. No, Brother, I didn’t buy you anything.

Nearby, was Waterstone’s on Picidilly (yep, that is seriously the name). It is, supposedly, the largest book store in Europe. It was 6 floors (5 stories of books and a cafe on the top level). I wasn’t that impressed as it wasn’t much bigger than, maybe like, 3 Alamance Crossing Barnes and Nobles combined. We split up and looked around for about an hour. When I met back up with Josh in the cafe, he was enjoying a pot of tea.

Tower Bridge

Les Mis last night was awesome! It is one of my favorite books and musicals and I have wanted to see it since I was in high school. I’ve been trying, without success, to get Josh to sing the duets with me. Oh well, it’s a long ride the Paris tomorrow morning, so we shall see.

We’ve been really lucky as far as the weather goes. Everyone keeps saying how 3 days of sunny weather in winter is unheard of in London. Unfortunately, it is supposed to rain all afternoon and all day tomorrow. The good news is that we already did all the outdoors site seeing we wanted to do. Today, we’ll be visiting museums and won’t have to be outside very much.

St Paul’s Cathedral