London Bridge Ain't Falling Down

According to my mom it has only rained in London once out of the five times that she has visited. Anytime you read about London in novels rarely is it bright and sunny. But luck seems to be on my side because the weather yesterday was absolutely gorgeous. There weren't many clouds in the sky and it got so warm that I was able to walk around in a t-shirt for half the day! Londoners all over the city also took advantage of the nice sun rays and stretched out on any green space available in the city!

In front of the Port of London Authority. 

The Tube station left us right in front of Tower of London which is an old castle that is almost 1000 years old (!) We didn't get to see much from the outside since it was so heavily fortified but I might return again and visit the inside one day since it looked so grand and regal.

 Right next to the Tower of London was the Tower Bridge! Just like Big Ben I think this is another classic icon of London. So classic that I think people sometimes think that Tower Bridge is London Bridge from the popular nursery rhyme. I can assure you folks that neither Tower or London Bridge will be falling down anytime soon, it felt quite sturdy underneath my feet as I crossed it. I have dozens of pictures of Tower Bridge it is so beautiful. My mother and I say that it looks like it came out of a Disney movie =]

View from Tower Bridge of the skyline of The City of London, the financial sector of London.

A picture taken from the other side of the Thames River.

This is London Bridge. 

 After crossing the bridge we were on The Queen's Walk, a nice little riverside promenade for pedestrians to walk with lots of little cafes, shops, and restaurants among other things. As I'm sure you've noticed one of the things that I have loved the most about London is it's history and architecture which is why I cannot resist taking pictures of any and all churches I pass by with their Gothic architecture. There's just so much detail in the exterior of every church that I am amazed with the architect's skill and vision! Below we have the first Gothic Church in London, Southwark Cathedral.

Southwark Cathedral

Invisible Man!

The Queen's walk was really fun to go down not only because of all the cafe's and beautiful churches but because there were historical things such as Sir Francis Drake's galleon. It's very cool to see something that I have studied in history class come to "life" (because ships are obviously inanimate) before my eyes. For those of you that don't remember Sir Francis Drake was a very famous (or infamous I should say) "privateer" (aka pirate) that was despised by the Spanish but loved by the Queen, Elizabeth I. Not only did I see stuff from History but also English class! Shakespeare's Globe in all its glory! I would have loved to gone and seen a play by him in his own Theatre but unfortunately they didn't have anything for available for the day I could have gone. That didn't stop me from snapping a few pictures though!

The Golden Hinde

The Globe

 And then here we have the Millennium Bridge which, as its name implies, was built for the new millennium back in 2000. It is pedestrian only and was "destroyed" by the Death Eaters in the 6th Harry Potter movie (I'm such a nerd...and hard-core fan!) In the background you can see St. Paul's cathedral which was where the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill was observed, Prince Charles and Lady Diana where married and where the Queen had a service in honour of her 80th birthday ;P

Millennium Bridge

In the gardens of St. Paul's Cathedral

 As if we hadn't taken pictures of enough churches we went on to Westminster Catherdral (not to be confused with the Abbey from yesterday) which is Catholic as oppposed to most of the ther churches which are Anglican. We went inside for a little prayer and came out quite peaceful =] The Cathedral ended up being a few blocks away from Buckingham so we decided to revisit it and take advantage of the fact that it wasn't as busy as the day before for some pictures.

Mommy =]

Me in front of Buckingham Palace

Random soldier but I like their uniforms!

 And so we pretty much saw all the major tourist hot spots in London and OMG WAIT. So after Buckingham we went down Savile Row which is famous for its tailoring and went down another street and ended up at one of the few Abercrombie and Fitch stores in the entire European Union. NO I didn't go shopping (who travels to London to shop? Oh yeah, Italians...lol just kidding (sort of) there were also a lot of other Europeans there) but it was definetely the nicest A&F store I've ever seen (nicer than the one in NY) and the best part of all? The employees were dancing! No, seriously. That's literally what they are scheduled to do, just stand by one of the store balconies and dance. My 'aunt' Amelia one time asked them if that's all they do and the employee she was talking to said "yeah sometimes you get scheduled to dance on the balcony from 2-3" LOL.

Well anyways back to what I was saying, we pretty much saw most of the tourist sttractions in London and ended up eating at a nice ristorant italiano were my mother and I had some amazing pasta and pizza, yum! We concluded our day with some delicious gelato (sorry KScoops, you've got nothing on Italian ice cream) in Piccadilly Circus.

Yeah the day sort of cooled down...

UYL,
Andre!