Saturday, 30 November 2019
We slept in a bit and had breakfast. Today we will be doing a walking tour of Bankside, the neighborhood between London Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge on the southern bank of the Thames. We took the subway AKA Underground (10 minute walk from the apartment) to the London Bridge Underground Station with a transfer at Baker Street Station. Baker Street...hum...that address sounds familiar.
As expected, it was quite the scene when we got outside. As I mentioned yesterday, there was a terrorist attack on London Bridge yesterday where 5 people were stabbed, 2 fatally. The bridge was blocked off and there were cameras and reporters everywhere.
We just avoided the scene and went on the Bankside walking tour in Rick Steves' London Guide. This is Southwark Cathedral, dates back to 1207, and is where Shakespeare prayed.
And here is Shakespeare, the eternal resident of the church:
After touring the church, we headed outside to the Borough Market. There has been a market here for over 1,000 years.
This is London Bridge. Many people think Tower Bridge is London Bridge, but it is not. The original bridge was built by the Romans over 2,000 years ago. The next version was built around 1200 followed by the 1823 version that was sold to an American and reassembled in Lake Havasu City. There is a running joke that the Brit's think the American believed he was buying Tower Bridge, but this is London Bridge:
And here are the reporters and news vans and an interesting comment on Google Maps. Our current location is the blue dot.
Here is the Golden Hinde Replica. This is a replica of the 100-foot clipper Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe with from 1577-1580. This replica actually circumnavigated the globe as well between 1974 and 1979 covering over 100,000 miles. It is now a museum.
A cool mural with musician playing in front of it. Fire actually came out of the top of his tuba as he played.
This is a replica of Shakespeare's Globe theater. The originally one burned down a performance started from a spark generated by a stage cannon going off. This replica, built in 1997, is a very realistic replica that even has wooden nails and a thatched roof.
Our plan was to tour the theater, but decided against it after reading reviews. It would have been cool to see a Shakespeare play here, but they were all sold out, and we saw a play in Stafford-Upon-Avon (Shakespeare's birthplace). So, this is all we saw of the Globe Theater, albeit, it is a very cool building.
The view from in front of the Globe was pretty cool. In the walking tour, this is where we read about the 1666 great fire. The fire started on 2 September 1666 and burned for 4 days. 80% of the city was burned to the ground, including 13,000 houses and 89 churches.
The buildings from right to left is 20 Fenchurch Street skyscraper (AKA "The Walkie-Talkie"); 52 Lime Street (AKA "The Scalpel"); The Leadenhall Building (AKA "The Cheesegrater"); and The Pinnacle (AKA "The Helter Skelter").
The view from in front of the Globe was pretty cool. In the walking tour, this is where we read about the 1666 great fire. The fire started on 2 September 1666 and burned for 4 days. 80% of the city was burned to the ground, including 13,000 houses and 89 churches.
The buildings from right to left is 20 Fenchurch Street skyscraper (AKA "The Walkie-Talkie"); 52 Lime Street (AKA "The Scalpel"); The Leadenhall Building (AKA "The Cheesegrater"); and The Pinnacle (AKA "The Helter Skelter").
This is looking to the left (east). This is Millennium Bridge where we are headed to next. The dome building is St. Paul's Cathedral.
And here I am, standing on the Millennium Bridge:
Here is the view looking east. This is Southwark Bridge in the foreground, London Bridge, just beyond, is mostly obscured except for the supports, and Tower Bridge is further out (see the towers).
The long view. The tall building on the right is the Shard, the tallest building in the UK (1,016 ft high).
The only thing left on this side of the Thames that we want to see is Tate Modern art museum, but it has it's own walking tour and we don't have enough time to see it now, but we did duck in to warm up a bit.
We were warmed up and ready to walk around 2:30 PM. We have to be somewhere by 4 PM and it is only a 15 minute walk from here. So, we turned back from where we came and walked slow, re-enjoying the sites we saw today. Where are we going you may ask? Well...today is Saturday, 30 November, the day of the last Ohio State regular season football game, which mean that today is the Ohio State versus University of Michigan Football game. I was able to find the Ohio State Alumni of Greater London on Twitter and saw that they are having a viewing party at Belushi's by London Bridge.
We arrived at Belushi's around 3:30 PM, a bit early, but not too early for a beer....ha. It wound up that the Michigan fans were meeting downstairs and the Ohio State fans were upstairs. Interesting that they separated the crowd, but I guess thing can get messy during European football games, so they are used to separating fans.
It was pretty fun meeting and talking to others that attending Ohio State, and to make it even better, Ohio State won 56 - 27.
We arrived at Belushi's around 3:30 PM, a bit early, but not too early for a beer....ha. It wound up that the Michigan fans were meeting downstairs and the Ohio State fans were upstairs. Interesting that they separated the crowd, but I guess thing can get messy during European football games, so they are used to separating fans.
It was pretty fun meeting and talking to others that attending Ohio State, and to make it even better, Ohio State won 56 - 27.
It was a fun night out after which we returned to the apartment. I don't know what we are going to do tomorrow. Maybe we will do nothing.
Oh by the way...remember the photos of the reporters above? Well, here is a screen capture of the actual broadcast:
Oh by the way...remember the photos of the reporters above? Well, here is a screen capture of the actual broadcast: