Went out today with a mission. Tomorrow we are meeting with some friends in a pub in The City, which is roughly equivalent to Wall Street in New York. It isn't so much a street, or a whole city, it is a financial district where the business of investing and banking is the speciality. Which pub, you ask? Don't know, we had to go and find one. It had to be central enough so that Hugh and Leanne could find it (they work in The City) and also Tara (who is a subway line away) and Melanie as well who will be coming from East of London after teaching. Oh, and Jan and I would have to be able to find it again tomorrow. The biggest challenge of all. We found one and we'll let you in on the results tomorrow.
After looking like fools wandering in and out of pubs and scratching our heads over subway maps, we found what we were looking for (Leanne's recommendation in the first place) and then went about the serious business of seeing the sights. Today I sort of led the way as we wandered about The City looking at the endless array of history and statues and icons of one sort or another. A huge icon for me was 'The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street' as she was known, also known now as The Bank of England. I won't go on about it, but to know the financial history of England is to stand in awe of that structure and the dealings that have happened there to shape the world we know.
More statues, more history, taller buildings like the London Stock Exchange, a sterile high-rise, totally lacking in character compared to the surrounding structures. And because I was getting more and more edgy with all that history, and we had to pee (and there are NO PUBLIC WASHROOMS IN LONDON) we went to another pub to think things through a bit.
Then off through more of The City and across London Bridge to the south side of the Thames. It is a new bridge so I guess the old nursery rhyme was right ('London bridge is falling down, falling down,' etc) and it fell down. Perhaps not. Got a view of the Tower Bridge next in line down the river, with a Royal Navy gunboat standing guard over something. Wandered around past the Globe Theatre but by then it was too dark to take pictures. Then across the Millenium Bridge straight toward St. Paul's cathedral. Unbelievable, words fail to describe all the sights and after a while the mind goes numb. That happened to us about that time, so it was off to a tube stop to connect with the Picadilly Line ('Mind the gap between the train and the platform' - I'm hearing that in my sleep now) and home by about 9:30.
More tomorrow.
