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.

What part of London wasn't covered today???

Westminster Hall-Houses of Parliament Tour

Still Westminster Hall-This is the only part we could take photos in. This is also the only part that is 900 years old. The other parts of the building were re-built first after a fire in the 1500's (it was a Palace to King's before this fire, then afterwards became Parliament) and then another fire in the 1800's ruined most of the structure and it was re-built then. The House of Common's area was bombed during the last day of the German Blitz in World War II, so it's even newer and most everything there was donated as presents from the Commonwealth countries who didn't participate in the war. One country gave an ash tray although smoking hadn't been permitted int he building for over 300 years. They really thought hard on that one.

They had an exhibit with models of the Olympic stadiums (which of course, being a former model maker myself, loved). They also had the torch and medals from the last London Olympic Games in 1948

Picadilly Circus!

View from the steps of St. Paul's

A trip to camden Town! Saw all kinds of interesting people here with full body tattoos, piercings, dreads down to their ankles, and neon hair! Was a very lively cool place to go!

Some of the interesting things they had for sell at the markets. Who doesn't need a wrestling mask? I wouldn't put one of those on my face if you paid me.

Located on Regent's Canal, hence the name Camden Locks named for the locks (a device used to lift and lower boats in different levels of water in a waterway-yes I used Wikipedia for that), making it a very scenic area in contrast to the crazy stores and markets.

The Locks

Still Camden-just not part of the market

A short walk away from Camden is Regent's Park

Leicester Square at dusk

With all the neon signage, it's a lot like Picadilly!

Kind of packed at night too because it's one of the few areas in London where the bars/pubs stay open past midnight. Since the tubes stop at midnight, most places shut down. Around this area, there are quite a few open later.

The Cambridge Theater was located right at the Seven Dials statue I was sitting on, so I thought I'd take a picture!


Started out the day by taking the summer tour of the Houses of Parliament (that giant building on the Thames with Big Ben). We started in Westminster Hall, went through to where the Queen's horse-drawn carriage enters into the building (Soveriegns Staircase), then to her Robing Room where she fixes her hair or something (they set up a little vanity table in the corner, but our guide wasn't sure what she did in there really as only 3 people accompany her in there) before her big speech to the House of Lords and House of Common that commences the session. We then went through the Royal Gallery, the Prince's Chamber, and then through to the Chamber of the House of Lords where the Queen's royal throne is and she calls parliament to order. Our tour guide joked that because the House of Lords representatives are unelected and until 2001, their titles were passed down through families (hereditary), the average age of the members is 68 and their average pose is with their eyes closed and head laying back on the benches. Because of this, they have speakers in the seats for the hard-of-hearing.

We walked through the Central Lobby (which possibly gave way to the term-lobbying) to the House of Commons which was decidely less impressive than the House of Lords (House of Lords was very ornate with gold everywherere and red leather benches, while the House of Commons had green leather benches, and mainly everything was made of wood-more common I guess you could say). I believe that it is less impressive as it was only re-opened in 1950, after England was in great debt after the war and in bad shape and didn't want to go into even more debt on an ostentacious government meeting hall.

We sat in the hall where the people from the House of Commons come out only if they vote "no" to a proposition (they have no more sophisticated way of voting even these days with digital everything!). Lastly, we ended back up in Westminster Hall. All in all, the tour was pretty good, but would have been better if we could have taken photos! As you can see, the rest of the day was quite packed as well!