Exploring The City Of London

Today London has offered up a wealth of great sights and a mixture of good and bad weather. Just to make things interesting, the weather tried to catch me out at the most inopportune times. The morning was mostly overcast with some periods of light rain. But the afternoon got a bit more interesting.

Touring London

London is a rather large and spread out city and as such not the easiest to get around. Doing so by foot is possible, but I choose to take the hop-on-hop-off bus today. The motivation was partially due to such limited time I had in London and a little with the weather.

Unfortunately, the combination of being the bus and the weather did not translate into the best photos. However, I have captured a couple of the attractions that London is famous for. I will share the shots, but London is a city that I will want to return in the future and explore much deeper.

Big Ben

City Hall

Houses of Parlement

London Eye

Public Art – Ship In A Bottle

London – Tower Bridge

Around half way around the loop of the hop-on-hop-off tour, I took the opportunity to do a little on foot. It is at this point that I was near to Tower Bridge, a spot I wanted to visit. The bridge was completed in the late 1800’s and still looks quite impressive.

There is an opening roadway to allow large boats to pass underneath. There are also two elevated walkways which would enable people to walk across while the roadway was open. The walkways got little use and subsequently were closed. That is until they were reopened as an exhibition covering the history of the bridge. You also get a good view in both directions along the Thames River.

The Tower Of London

The Tower Of London is located not too far from Tower Bridge and is another location I wanted to visit. Construction on The Tower of London started around the 11th century by William the Conquer. Although I wanted to visit time was not available and just got a picture from the outside.

London Traffic

The traffic here is terrible and saw it take over an hour to get back to the hotel. Which combined with missing the other stop for the day due to a torrential downpour.

So I made some changes to the plan for the day. I had wanted to walk from Hyde Park back to the hotel this afternoon. However, with the rain, I decided on returning to the hotel and exploring some more indoor options.

Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum is a huge building, and to my surprise entirely free to enter. It makes for a rather good wet weather activity. It could be very easy to lose a whole day exploring all of the exhibitions here.

Harrods Department Store

After my visit to the Natural History Museum with some better weather, I continued my walk. Not to much further and I found the famous Harrods Department Store. I took a short look around the store, but think this turned out to be a bad choice.

By the time that I was heading back to the hotel, the weather had turned yet again. The wind had picked up, and the rain had started light but got heavier. So I was a bit wet by the time I got back to the hotel.

Even with the bad weather I enjoyed my time in London today. I think in the future a little more time to allow for bad weather will be better. But even though I will be leaving London tomorrow afternoon, I hope to see a bit more in the morning.