Day 1
Arrived Heathrow Saturday, 2-jun-12 at 8:00am after a non-stop flight from DFW. Exciting times in London, the Olympics are due to start in a month. More importantly is, that without knowing it, we booked the London portion of this trip to coincide with Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee celebration which is the 60th Anniversary of her coronation. Our hotel is called the Grosvenor House on Park Lane and is situated next to Hyde Park. The accomodations are outstanding, an oversized suite by any standard but in London, truly humongous.
Day-1 walkabout starts out heading East through Grosvenor Square which is also called American Park because the US Embassy is there. The statues of FDR and Ronald Reagan made us feel at home. We headed up Bond Street with it's incredible array of designer shops in both clothing and jewelry lines; Versace, Ferragamo, YSL, Tiffany, Gucci, Prada, Burberry and more. I think my AMEX Card started pulsating. The Ferragamo building is very old and beautiful with a wonderfully musical bell tower.
Next we found Piccadily Circus which was crowded but very upbeat. From there we quite accidentally stumbled upon the old Texas Embassy building. Yes, Texas (the country) once had an embassy in London and we were determined to find it so this was karmically awesome. Now the place is a Tex-Mex cantina and we agreed to come back here to eat later in the week. From here we found Trafalgar Square with Admiral Nelson's Column and a MASSIVE TV screen. This is where we began to notice the preparation work for the Queen's party this weekend. Which by the way, we learned was actually going to be a 4-day weekend meaning some of the "touristy" sites would be closed till Tuesday! At this point we chose to embrace the monarchy and decided to attend as many of the events as possible, nothing like pre-planning.
Continuing the journey now, we arrived at Pall Mall or as the Londoners call it, the Mall, which they incorrectly pronounce as the "Mal". Really you'd think these people could speak proper English! The Mall starts with an Arch and leads all the way down to Buckingham Palace. This road was really done up well with flags and bunting but guess what, the Palace was closed to visitors due the the Jubilee.. Ha!
Time to cross the River Thames, which we did at the Hungerford Footbridge. We began to notice people camping out along the river and realized that the Queen's Flotilla was not going to be an easy site to see come tomorrow (more on that later). We made our way up to Parliament, Big Ben (sounded so good!), Westminster Abbey and the London Eye (a huge Observation Wheel).
Then we re-crossed the river at the Westminster Bridge and that is where the rain started, I point this out now because for all intents and purposes, it NEVER stopped raining! Cold, wet, London rain. We did the most logical thing which was to run to the nearest pub, The Red Lion which is where we hunkered down, well provisioned with Ale. We chose to take the Underground back to the hotel and so endeth the first day, very soggy yet wonderful.
Read MoreDay-1 walkabout starts out heading East through Grosvenor Square which is also called American Park because the US Embassy is there. The statues of FDR and Ronald Reagan made us feel at home. We headed up Bond Street with it's incredible array of designer shops in both clothing and jewelry lines; Versace, Ferragamo, YSL, Tiffany, Gucci, Prada, Burberry and more. I think my AMEX Card started pulsating. The Ferragamo building is very old and beautiful with a wonderfully musical bell tower.
Next we found Piccadily Circus which was crowded but very upbeat. From there we quite accidentally stumbled upon the old Texas Embassy building. Yes, Texas (the country) once had an embassy in London and we were determined to find it so this was karmically awesome. Now the place is a Tex-Mex cantina and we agreed to come back here to eat later in the week. From here we found Trafalgar Square with Admiral Nelson's Column and a MASSIVE TV screen. This is where we began to notice the preparation work for the Queen's party this weekend. Which by the way, we learned was actually going to be a 4-day weekend meaning some of the "touristy" sites would be closed till Tuesday! At this point we chose to embrace the monarchy and decided to attend as many of the events as possible, nothing like pre-planning.
Continuing the journey now, we arrived at Pall Mall or as the Londoners call it, the Mall, which they incorrectly pronounce as the "Mal". Really you'd think these people could speak proper English! The Mall starts with an Arch and leads all the way down to Buckingham Palace. This road was really done up well with flags and bunting but guess what, the Palace was closed to visitors due the the Jubilee.. Ha!
Time to cross the River Thames, which we did at the Hungerford Footbridge. We began to notice people camping out along the river and realized that the Queen's Flotilla was not going to be an easy site to see come tomorrow (more on that later). We made our way up to Parliament, Big Ben (sounded so good!), Westminster Abbey and the London Eye (a huge Observation Wheel).
Then we re-crossed the river at the Westminster Bridge and that is where the rain started, I point this out now because for all intents and purposes, it NEVER stopped raining! Cold, wet, London rain. We did the most logical thing which was to run to the nearest pub, The Red Lion which is where we hunkered down, well provisioned with Ale. We chose to take the Underground back to the hotel and so endeth the first day, very soggy yet wonderful.
