Onion River Exploration Project: Ultimate London

Eileen playing Tour Guide

Day 10 (8/21/12)

We got up early to get ready for our first big day. We had booked “The Ultimate London Tour” which consisted of ten hours of bus travel punctuated with stops at St Paul’s Cathedral, The Changing of the Guard, lunch at a medieval restaurant (The Medieval Banquet) by the tower of London, the Tower of London, a boat tour on the Thames, and finally the London Eye. After we had started on the tour we were told that the tour ended at the Eye and we would have to find our way home from there, so we had our second experience with the Underground. At this point we were starting to wonder if we should have bought the Oyster. The Oyster, we found out, is a card which like a gift card electronically keeps track of your current balance and subtracts your fair as you go. The fairs are also much cheaper with the Oyster. Unfortunately we didn’t find this out until two days before we left. At any rate, like most European Cathedrals St. Paul’s was magnificent to observe. Designed by Christopher Wren, who was enthralled with the Catholic cathedrals in Rome, It is as opulent as the protestant hierarchy would allow. It was completed in only thirty five years which was a major feat. Compared to Denmark the changing of the guard was a bit of a letdown. There are so many people that you can barely get a glimpse of any one part and at best much takes place behind a fenced in area so you do not get the intimacy that you get in Copenhagen. Then it was a mad rush to get out and back on to the bus. Next we headed to the Tower of London. There were only about nine of us who went to the Medieval Banquet restaurant for lunch. They say that company makes the meal and although the food was forgettable we made a couple of friends on the journey that made it worth our while. The tower of London itself is a very interesting place and seeing the crown jewels is, for most people, a once in a life time thing but like many of the attractions it is somewhat spoiled by the over the top presentation. To see the jewels you have to go through several rooms with multimedia fluff that adds nothing to the display and in my opinion cheapens the whole experience. The highlight of the Tower was getting to listen and talk to one of the “Beefeaters”. All of the Yeomen Warders (the real title of the beefeaters) have had at least 20 years of exemplarily military service and live on the grounds. Our particular Warder had thirty five years in the actual military and two service metals. From the Tower we boarded a tour boat that took us up the Thames to the Eye of London. We decided to do the Eye in daylight because we still were not that familiar with the undergrounds and wanted to get back to our hotel before too late. As it turned out that was a very good decision because when we got back to our room there was a message that our tour for the next day could no longer pick us up at our hotel and we had to use the time to find our pickup site.