A Bike Ride through London!

Robyn's one request was to do the Fat Tire Bike Tour. The Thames one only ran on Thurs-Sat., so we did the Royal Parks one instead.

Instead of bells to let people know when we were coming, we had these little guys who made squeeky bath toy noises. It was awesome..lol

I was not talented enough to take photos while riding my bike, so all the shots you will see are taken while I was not on them. Robyn on the other hand, was quite the multi-tasker.

Break for lunch at Trafalgar Square

All of our squeakers!

This is the back of 10 Downing Street where the Prime Minister lives (basically like the White House). Our tour guide told us the PM hasn't lived there for 2 years, but this was news to me, news to the guards with the machine guns, and the masses of people waiting outside the front gate... Not sure who to believe.

Old Admiralty Building at Horse Guards Parade. We obviously missed the parade of horses.

Also at the Horse Guards Parade. The building covered in vines is apparently a bomb-proof citadel built in 1940.

Our tour guide talking about Westminster Abbey

View of Whitehall roofs from a bridge in St. James's Park

Hyde Park

So after the tour, it was time for some soft serve ice cream with a flake!

Not sure what this was. Looked like a Buddhist temple in the middle of Kensington Park

Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Garden

We happened to take our tour on the 13th anniversary of Princess Diana's death (she dies August 31, 1997). This is her memorial fountain in Hyde Park. It was designed to be like a necklace to express her feminism and be interactive so that people would hang out in the area and not just view a statue and leave. There were tons of families sitting out around the area, and little kids enjoying the cool fresh water, so it seemed succesful to me.

Austrailian War Memorial in Hyde Park Corner to commemorate the 102,000 Austrailians who died in the First and Second War.

So at Hyde Park Corner, they have horse crossings! The buttons are of course like 6 feet tall so people on horses can reach them. We saw tons of horse poo in the road, but where in the world are these horses coming from?

Hold your horses! (sorry, couldn't resist)

St. James's Park-we walked the route the bike tour had taken us to get better photos

View from the same bridge as above in St. James's Park

Horse Guards Parade (on our walk-not bike ride)

A walk down Whitehall

Houses of Parliament from Southbank

So as you can see from this post, Robyn and I took the 11 a.m. Royal Parks Fat Tire bike tour. We started at Queensway, rode through Kensginton Park (stopped at Kensington Palace where Princess Diana had lived, but we couldnt see it as it was being renovated-lots of things are being renovated now so that they are all done in 2012 for the Olympics). Then we did the length of Kensginton Park passing the Serpentine Gallery, rode past The Serpentine (body of water in Hyde Park), through Hyde Park (via Hyde Park Corner), through Green Park, down The Mall passing St. James's Park, and over to Trafalgar Square where we breaked for lunch. From there we did the Horse Guards Parade (which I had never seen, well not recently) down to Westiminster Abbey, then back through the parks to Queensway. Surprisingly enough, I wasn't the worst bike rider in the group- one young kid ran into a wall. However, it was tough work to start and stop at the intersections. Luckily though, we spent very little time on the roads of London as they are CRAZY drivers and riding on the opposite side of the road is tricky!

After the tour, Robyn and I walked basically the intital route through the parks down to Westminster to get some pictures of the sun setting at Parliament. As she was leaving the next morning (at like 6), we wanted to do a nice sit down dinner, but by the time we got to that area, we were too exhuasted and starving to walk anymore to find somewhere. So we ended up eating Burger King at Waterloo train station (Robyn ate a bagel sandwich from somewhere else). So not quite the send-off I would have liked, but man if felt awesome to get home and go to bed that night.

Pull out the Red Stripe!! Notting Hill Carnival

Somewhere near Trafalgar Square on our way to Leicester Square. I got us a little lost-surprise surprise!

Charing Cross Train Station

Leicester Square

Covent Garden

Notting Hill Carnival-Have to drink the Jamaican beer as this is a festival to celebrate Carribean's in London!

Most pubs/bars close down and board up their doors and windows to prevent any damage/mess and bring their business to the street

600,000 people came on Monday-Bank Holiday. 400,000 the day before on Family Day

All the stores board up as well. And get graffittied in the process. Most of the residents either leave, sit on their balconies for the best view without battling the crowds, or rent out their toilets for 1 pound per visitor! Those people must have made hundreds!

The smokiness is coming from all of the food stands that lined the streets.

Second largest street parade in the world-first largest in Europe. Can you see why??

I've been so dissapointed in the blandness of British food, that I couldn't pass up the spicy Carribean food!

Jerk Chicken and a ginormous dumpling. And it was GOOD!

Chloe was telling us about this apartment complex. Apparently when they built it, they forgot to put in a "lift" (elevator), hence the side addition that looks like an after-thought. This is because it totally was an afterthought. Oops.

So Notting Hill area is one of the most expensive zip codes in London, and this is the trash situation from the Carnival. When we left at 7ish, the streets looked like they couldn't handle anymore trash, and it goes until midnight, so needless to say, the cleaning crews had quite a job ahead of them!

the Parade

Decided to leave the carnival and go to the less crowded pubs of Carnaby Street to get a few pints to end the night!

So Robyn and I started out the day by heading to Trafalgar Square. I meant for us to walk up Charing Cross Rd. to Leicester Square, but instead we walked down Northumberland Ave. and came to the River Thames and Embankment instead. We found our way back to Trafalger Square and finally Robyn foudn us the road ont he map to Leicester Square and Covent Garden. Haha, I really impressed her with my directional skills of London.

We ended up meeting Chloe around 2ish at Tottenham Court Road tube station. To get to the carnival was crazy. They had closed down entry to most of the tube stations around the carnival so that they could utilize the escaltors and tunnels for people exiting the stations only. With over one million people attneding the two day carnival, you can only imagine what the tube situation was. They literally had people pushing you into the tube, and even when you thought it was impossible to squeeze even one more person in, somehow like 4 would get on. Luckily we only had about 5 stops from Tottenham Court Road because it was boiling hot, Robyn had her face in some ladies smelly armpit, and we were all getting a bit light headed (not that if you fainted you would be able to fall down-you'd still be standing, just unconscience).

The carnival was defintiely fun, but really crowded as you cna probably gather. After about 5 hours of walking around, we headed out for something a little less crazy! Great experience though!