England: Day 1, London

Photograph taken by on Tuesday, August 06, 2013
The Blues and Royals riding under Wellington Arch.

The Blues and Royals riding under Wellington Arch.

I took about 4,400 photos during our two weeks in England* and there is no way I’m going to give you a full accounting of them here. I’m too far behind as it is, for one thing. So, I’m going to post one or possibly two photos from each day and tell you a little of what else we saw that day. If you know me on Facebook, then you’ll have already seen more than enough but you might learn a thing or two about our trip here in any case. If we are not connected on Facebook drop me a line and I’ll give you a link to my best-of gallery on my private site.

Our first day in England was not a full day because it’s the day we arrived. Once we were finished at the airport we took the tube to Paddington Railway Station and checked our luggage there. We walked from there south to Hyde Park. We made our way south south east towards Buckingham Palace and as we got to Wellington Arch, just outside Hyde Park, a detachment of riders from the Blues and Royals rode through the arch, right next to us.

We continued towards the Palace and I noticed that there were a lot of people that way. We had specifically planned not to try to see the changing of the guards. It’s fun to see but it’s a lot of work and a lot of standing about in dense crowds to see it, so we figured we’d give it a miss this time. As it turns out, we got there just as it was finishing up. My internal clock said it was much later than that, but it was just before noon.

From Buck House we walked up St. James Park, taking a break to sit in the shade and rest a bit. Everyone was pretty sleepy and worn out, since at this point we’d been about 27 hours without sleep. We made our way to Trafalgar Square and then on to St. Martin-in-the-Fields, where we had lunch in the cafe in the crypt. The food isn’t very fancy but at that point, filling was more what we were looking for. We also had pretty much unlimited access to water and toilets, two essentials when traveling.

After our lunch, we caught a bus back to Paddington Station, got our bags, and took another bus to our hotel, which was near Notting Hill Gate, just to the northwest of Kensington Gardens. We took naps before going out later for dinner and then came back and called it a day.

* Actually, there were only eleven days when we were seeing sights and on which I took most of my 4,422 photographs. Day 9 we drove from the southwest to the north, day 13 we drove back to London, and day 14 we left. I took 19, 49, and 31 images on those days, respectively and averaged 393 per day on the other eleven days.

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