Keep your eye in the sky

Sunday. This was one of my favorite days of the trip. We were out the door early, made our coffee stop and were on our way.

A walk along the Thames, specifically “The Queens Walk” was on the agenda. Our first stop along the walk was the Globe Theater. 

We paid the admission and got….you guessed it, the audio headsets to make our way around the displays and exhibitions. Also included was a guided tour of the actual theater.  The docent was extremely interesting and full of facts and stories about the theater and Shakespeare’s era. This was a late addition to our itinerary (it was on Lauren’s radar), and it ended up being one of our favorite tours on the trip. 

Then lunch at the adjoining Swan restaurant. A side note about the restaurants in Europe. We were never rushed anywhere we ate. Not like here, where they need to turn over the tables quickly. We could have sat there all day and no one would have cared. 

Strolling along the Thames we encountered many things.

The “Clink Prison Museum”

A group of musicians. We later saw them over by the Tower of London entertaining the crowds.

And the Tower Bridge. Which many people mistake for the London Bridge. But that is a whole other bridge.

We headed across the bridge to go to the Tower of London to see the crown jewels. For some reason I was excited to see this. I am not sure why, maybe the whole concept that all these jewels were kept in one tower under lock and key. Then Lauren burst my bubble and explained it really wasn’t “a” tower. And it wasn’t. It should be called the Towers of London because the whole place was a series of towers and fortresses and building all linked together. The crown jewels were in a building, not even a tower. But they were gorgeous and worth the long line we had to wait in to see them.

By now our feet were screaming again so we hopped on the tube and headed back to our hotel area. It was near dinnertime so I thought we would grab some sandwiches and head back to the hotel to regroup before heading out again. We had one more thing in today’s plan. But Lauren wanted to keep on going.

So we went over the Westminster Bridge to this.

The London Eye. It is the tallest ferris wheel in Europe, and the most popular paid tourist attraction in the United Kingdom. I first saw it on an episode of The Amazing Race and ever since then it has been on my bucket list. And I was going on it.

I had bought these tickets ahead of time, so we basically skipped the line and got right on. The sun had finally popped its head out and the views from here were incredible. After our 30 minute revolution on the wheel we decided to end our day with a Thames River cruise.

Now our feet were really done for the day, so we stopped for some sandwiches and headed back to the hotel. We were exhausted.

What will tomorrow bring? You will have to wait to find out.