We started out early on our second day of London with plans to do the millennium mile (a mile long walk that covers all of the biggest attractions in London). First stop was the Tower of London, home of the crown jewels and all of our guide books strongly suggested getting there early to ensure that we would not be in a long line.
Luckily we followed that advice. We arrived at promptly 9 am, met up with my friend Laura Shelton who is studying abroad in London, and were four of the first visitors through the gate. Our first stop was of course the beautiful crown jewels. We walked through three huge rooms separated into rows and rows of waiting lines, but given the time they were all empty. Soon afterward we arrived at the most secure room in the Tower of London. Beautiful crowns gleamed at us from all angles, and aside from several tower guards we had the room to ourselves! We were able to see each one from every angle and to take our time to read their descriptions and even ask the guards questions, several other tourists trickled in as we headed off to see the other exhibits. We had lots of fun playing in the interactive sections of the tower and got a beautiful view of the tower bridge.
When we left the tower about a hour later as we left we passed seven huge school groups waiting at the gate to enter the tower and quickly view the rooms we had all to ourselves. We walked across the Tower Bridge and had a delicious lunch at a pub called Skankers on the other side. On our way to the Tate Modern we took at quick peak at Shakespeare’s beautiful Globe Theatre. At the Tate Modern there was a huge nightmare display in the turbine room. The nightmare was depicted by larger-than-life spiders over rows and rows of bunk beds.
Many of the other exhibits were just as impressive. A exhibit called “thirty pieces of silver” was comprised of thousands of pieced of discarded silver plates, cups, trinkets, and even musical instruments crushed flat by a bulldozer and suspended by clear string in thirty circles filling an entire room. By the time we had seen three floors of modern art we sat down to watch a movie about the making of the nightmare exhibit and all four of us fell into a light sleep awaking several minutes later realizing that we really need a pick-me-up. We traveled up to the 7th floor where a café overlooked the river and London skyline.
After leaving the Tate we headed towards the London Eye to pick up our tickets for later that afternoon. Along the way we passed a grafiti skateboard park. book market, and very strange car statue.
Here we said goodbye to my Laura who headed back to her apartment and we continued to the Eye, a huge Ferris wheel that provides a spectacular view of the city.
We wanted to get on at sunset to give us the best view possible and so while waiting for the sun tos et we sat at a small outdoor café and met Blaise, an employee of the London Eye, who was as much entertained by our American mannerisms as we were by his reactions to them.
Luckily for us Blaise’s friend Matt was in charge of assigning people the pods of the London Eye, a simple mention that we knew Blaise got us a pod all to ourselves and we couldn’t have picked a better time to mouth the huge wheel, the sun had just disappeared and we soared into the sky as it changed from a brilliant bright blue to the dark navy of night.
Big Ben gleamed brightly up at us as we darted from side to side taking millions of photographs. We are very lucky that we had our own pod, we probably would have driven everyone else crazy with our multi-angle picture taking obsession.
At the top we had a dance party and the people from other pods looked over at us very amused. It was definitely a highlight of the trip.
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