The West End

Follow along with my pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/bbergey/WestEndSightseeing

Greetings! So Saturday was my first bit of what I have decided to call "Power Sightseeing." This means that I see as much as I possibly can in one trip, mostly by foot. I think it's a great way for me to see the sights without spending the time and money to go in each one. And it will help me get to know London and know where to take all of you when you visit!

With the help of the great book that Julie got me before I left, I planned my first trip around the West End. This is a rather large area of downtown London where you will hear a number of familiar places mentioned. Also, as I said, it's very large. I decided to wear my pedomoter to see how far I actually walked. Believe it or not, I walked 38,000 steps (which according to my pedometer is like 15 miles, but that might be a stretch)! So needless to say, I was very tired by the end of the day.

Since my posts look like rubbish when I include pictures, I have decided to do a couple things. First, down the right hand side of this page, I have will add a number of pics from my recent adventures. These will change often as I cycle in new pics. Second, at the bottom of this post I have included a slideshow of all the pics I took on this specific trip. And finally, I have posted all of the same pics on Picassa, which is a web album provided by Google. If you don't have a google account, I'm sorry, but you should. :-) The link to the album is: http://picasaweb.google.com/bbergey/WestEndSightseeing.

I started the trip by taking the Tube down to Covent Garden Piazza, which is a large square with a market, shops and resturaunts. It also has a number of street performers that were actually quite good. I snagged a couple shots of the Piazza from the inside and out, and also enjoyed walking through the Saturday-Market style shopping area. I also found a number of Outdoor gear shops!

I then walked through Chinatown and down to Piccadilly Circus. No, it's not actually a Circus, but it is London's version of Times Square. There are big flashing advertisements on the circle where a number of major roads intersect. It is a popular area because you can easily get to a number of "hotspots" in town from here. I've been told that this area is much better at night with all the lights and the nightlife, but I did find the blend between the old architecture and modern marketing quite interesting. On my way to the Circus, I walked through what is London's Broadway. I'm not horribly interested in musicals, but I think I would like to see Monty Python's Spamelot!

From the Circus, I walked down to Green Park and Buckingham Palace. Little did I know that Saturday was the Queen's official birthday. She actually has two birthdays every year, one is of course her own, and the other is every June so a celebration can be done with decent weather. I wish I would have arrived earlier because the crowds were gigantic, but I did see quite a bit of the festivities nonetheless...including a couple sightings of the Queen herself from her balcony! There were also a dozen flyovers of varios air force jets and many shots of a canyon in the park nearby. It really was quite an amazing place and the parks surrounding the palace are absolutely beautiful. Plus I got the full experience with marching bands, marching gunmen, police on horses, and the royal guards dressed in their full red uniforms. It was by far the best part of the day and I look forward to going back sometime.

St. Jame's Park is a large park that stretches down "The Mall," which is the long road that connects the Palace to the city streets. It has great views of the Palace and other nearby buildings, and was a great place to stop and eat lunch. At the end of the mall is the Ministry of Defense, which looks quite amazing from afar. I'm determined the red stadium seating in the square in front of the building is for the public executions and hangings.

After walking through the Ministry of Defense and into Trafalgar Square, I headed toward the mighty Thames River and the Westminster area. Westminster houses a number of political buildings, such as the House of Parliament (with Big Ben towering it's east end), and the gothic Westminster Abbey is an impressive church where almost all British sovereign have been crowned. The churchnitself was closed when I got there so I'll have to go back sometime. I got quite a few pics of Big Ben from both sides of the river, including the square across the street where I had a snack and took a quick nap.

From there I trekked back through the Circus and into Soho, a popular spot for nightlife, and into Bloomsbury which is the home of the British Museum and the University of London. Although I didn't spend any time inside the museum, it is free and huge! The University was surprisingly unimpressive, but a nice quiet walk away from the bustle of the rest of the city. My last stroll was down the high street of a small borough called Marylebone. It sits between Bloomsbury and Hyde Park and was really posh and nice.

My day wouldn't have been complete without a stroll through Hyde Park and a stop at Whole Foods (that's right, I found a few around!). I was excited to find a familiar store, but found that it was still as foreign as everything else. Although it was by far the nicest grocery store I've been in since I've been here. It was quite expensive (even for London standards) but I did buy a yummy roll and some juice.

As promised, here is the slideshow of my pics, which can also be seen on my web album linked above.