It was a quick trip to tour London for sure but our main reasons for going were three-fold. 1) Attend the Chicago Bears game at Tottenham Spurs stadium. 2) Catch up with good friends. 3) Catch up with friends from my Arctic trip.
Playing tourist
I’m not a good tourist. I don’t enjoy the throngs of people who don’t know where they’re going, what they’re doing and stop in the middle of everywhere to either take endless selfies, look at a map or just figure out what it is they are doing. Personally, I stand and walk as far to the side of where ever I am as I can so I’m not in the way. People these days seem to have no regard for anyone around them, only themselves and the space they are in. That’s a whole other topic not for this blog (or any blog of mine likely).
You can read a better detailed description of our day on Mike’s blog (for the first few days anyway, he ran out of storage space so had to leave it. Maybe I’ll fix it for him at some point but it’s time-consuming to resize all of the images and reupload so we’ll see.) He always does a great job of describing what we did and saw. Mike’s Blog Day One.
Tours on a double-decker
Yes, we did. Honestly, when I used to travel on my own a lot more than I do now, the first thing I would do in almost any city I was in was to take a hop-on, hop-off bus tour. It’s a great way to get your bearings and know where things are so you can go back later to see and explore what you want.
This is what I do on tours. I take photos. What did you expect? So here are my images from our first day in London, most of them are from the bus. There are a few from walking around. I chose to focus on architecture. I know, another shocker. Why? Because I’d really like to go back to London just for that purpose, to photograph the amazing architecture. Old, new, London has it all. Perhaps there will be a See! London photo tour in the future.
The London Eye
Because you have to, don’t you? We did not go for a ride though, I’ve been and Mike wasn’t really interested (again, we mostly avoid touristy things if we can help it.)
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Leicester Square
Just wandering around Leicester Square, looking for things we needed to find, places to pick up tickets, where to go, somewhat wandering aimlessly. Some fun things to see and people to listen to.
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Park Plaza at Westminster Bridge
This is one building I NEED to go back to explore more for sure!
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No. 1 Blackfriars Road, Bankside
Another really interesting architectural building.
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Random Cool Building
I tried in some places during the bus tour to take a shot of a building address, sign or street sign so I could come back and identify a building. No such luck with this one. Seriously, I’ll just have to go back and find it again.
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St. Paul’s Cathedral
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Mostly random, unknown buildings
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Heading back
As we entered one of the tube stations I saw this big puddle at the bottom of one of the stairways. You know I love to play in puddles and get my camera wet. I kind of love how this turned out.
End of Day 1
Exhausted, yes! Weather, we had sun, blue skies, clouds and rain. Makes for a wide variety of images. Even though we weren’t specifically stopping for photography, there are always ways to make it work.
