Victoria Coach Station is conveniently located on Buckingham Palace Road which we followed to... Buckingham Palace! There were tons of people milling around snapping pictures and conversing in more languages than ever heard at the Tower of Babel. Before long, some guys with tasselled hats and red cloaks on really pretty black horses went riding by the Victoria Memorial and down the mall, and not long after that the actual changing of the guard took place, complete with a marching band. I tried to take pictures, but I mostly just got close-up shots of the backs of people’s heads.
From Buckingham Palace we wandered northeast down the Mall, through the Admiralty Arch, and to the edge of Trafalgar Square where we stopped for photos of the monuments and of the National Gallery. We turned right down Whitehall and took pictures of the war memorials, including one to the Women of WWII, which was really interesting, and the Monument to the Glorious Dead. We arrived at Big Ben just in time to hear it strike noon and went from there across the Westminster Bridge and along the Thames which was quite as dirty as you have heard. We took pictures of the London Eye and of each other being silly, and in a little market off the walk we found a painting of Shah Rukh Khan (our favourite Bollywood hero) on the front of a shop.
I’m using google maps to help clarify the streets we used, but some of them don’t appear to be included. There are many landmarks identified, however, and it’s interesting to me how close we were to so many things that I’ve seen/read/heard about but didn’t run into. The Rose and Crown, for instance is only a few blocks from The Mad Hatter, which I took a picture of. We made it down to the Globe Theatre Centre, and then past what is supposed to be a replica of the Golden Hind, the Southwark Cathedral, and Borough Market.By this time it was half past one, Lauren was headed for a hunger coma and Padma and I had both developed headaches, so we stopped at a small bistro type place for emergency good-mood-restoring paninis. We then headed for the Tate Modern for some surrealism. Some bits were better than others, but my favourites were a giant mahogany electric plug suspended from the ceiling and the works by Georges Braque in the Poetry and Dreams exhibit. By the time we got out of the Tate the weather had cleared. It was breezy and gorgeous and we took lots of pictures from the Millenium Bridge, which is the one that Dementors destroyed at the beginning of the sixth Harry Potter movie. It’s seemed intact, however.
The Millenium Bridge leads straight to the side of St. Paul’s Cathedral, which was sunlit and beautiful. We used a handy dandy map that Padma procured to discover that we weren’t far from Fleet Street and we headed that way. Along that road we passed a creepy-looking church set back from the street that turned out to be St. Bride’s, the place where Virginia Dare’s parents were married. If you don’t recall, Virginia Dare was the first colonist born on American soil. Our country is such a baby!
From Fleet Street we turned onto Aldwych and then onto Drury Lane. We didn’t see the muffin man, but we did pass the theatre currently showing a production of Dirty Dancing. From there we headed for The Royal Opera House and Covent Garden. Almost every flower box along the street contained ivy and gardenias in full bloom.
As it got darker, we turned in to Soho and meandered through the streets as they filled up with people. Most of the avenues were closed off to vehicles or were open only to cabs and police cars. A few brave bicycle cabs were pedalling around, but almost everyone was on foot. Imagine a cross between Shockoe Bottom and Times Square and you’ll have an idea what this was like – small shops, restaurants and clubs lining narrow cobblestone streets, with giant lighted billboards and theatre fronts breaking it up. Navigating was difficult because the map that we acquired was very tiny, and some of the streets weren’t at all marked, but we got it figured out eventually and even found a Thai place for dinner.
It wasn’t far from the restaurant to Trafalgar Square, and from there we retraced our steps back up the Mall and past Buckingham Palace. The first Victoria station that we found was for trains, but we stopped to use the facilities, which one often pays to do here. We made it to the coach station a few blocks away just in time to hear that our bus was delayed half an hour. While we waited, we watched some fearless pigeons search the station for food. One of them, a grubby-looking white bird, fluttered up onto the bench opposite ours and looked at us for a while before taking off again. Our bus finally arrived and on we got. Padma slept all the way home, but Lauren and I got in some girl talk. Once home, I stayed up just long enough to discover that our trek through the city had covered more than ten miles. No wonder my feet hurt!
