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.

Lesson Learned TFL-Bayswater Art Market and Peter Pan!

Kensington Garden-on what BBC called a SUNNY day. liars.

Peter Pan statue-Don't know if the statue or J.M. Barrie's books Peter Pan in Kensington Garden came first

I found it odd that they built that random skyscraper right across the street from such a tranquil place since most of them are in the City! Maybe they don't have zoning here either.

Thought this was so cute!

Bayswater Art Market-Didn't see anything I liked except for the artist I bought from last year in April

hahahahaha. a memorable artist from my trip there last April

Other side of Bayswater Road-at Queensway Station

On my walk to Notting Hill-you can tell even from this shot just how sunny it was outside.haha

On my way to Portobello Road

A sampling of Portobello Road stores that are not antiquariums

So I learned a very valuable lesson today about traveling on the weekends with planned tube engineering works-it's a pain even if my tube stop isn't closed (tfl stands for Transport for London). I thought because part of each of the lines I needed were open, that I could hop lines to get to where I needed to be. Well this worked well enough getting to Queensway where I could walk up and down Bayswater to get to stops like Lancaster Gate, Notting Hill Gate, and Marble Arch. So I spent about 2 hours walking arlound the art market, in Kensington Garden, and up Portobello Road (yes, the Portobello Road market was yesterday, but I cannot wake up in time for the market anymore-that's the good thing about the Bayswater Art Market-the artists get there around noonish!). By the time I was done with this, and ready to go home, I was exhausted and had no idea what I was in for. 2 hours later, 5 tube station changes later, and one standing bus ride, I finally made it back to Bob's. Apparently, things don't work the same way going back Southeast as they do going Northwest on the tube map. And the 137 bus decided to play it's role by not going to Oxford Circus, and instead of being every 8-10 minutes, being every 40 minutes. Lesson learned London-stay in on the weekends or within walking range! Still a good day though!