London Part 2: Things To Do

During the day there were quite a lot of interesting activities we did. We visited some museums and joined tours. The best thing about London is that most of the museums are free of charge; you just give donation, if you want and I think it is important to donate to keep them free of charge. I divided this chapter into two, pay and for free.

I. Free of Charge
Tate Modern
There are two Tates in London, Tate Britain and Tate Modern. This one is in front of Millennium Bridge. The Museum is huge and as its name, it contains modern arts. It is divided in two parts, one part containing landscape and while the other contains real object. I can hardly understand about the modern art, and it was a big mistake that we didn’t rent any audio guide. I was so puzzled there and could just wonder what the artist actually wanted to express. After some time I arrived at the conclusion that I am not very interested in this kind of art.

The art was so strange and sometimes mean, for example, it was one room with a big screen. On the screen you can see one girl being harassed by her mother. The mother pulled, pushed, kicked, hit and said swear words to her. It was so mean, what kind of art is that? :-(
From the Espresso Bar in 4th floor there was really beautiful view. You can see London town, with St. Paul’s Cathedral, Millennium Bridge, and the skyscrapers.

For Philipp the more interesting view was the structure of the Tate Modern. Tate Modern was an old huge power plant. The structure consists of the steal, so I guess you know why he was so excited.
He showed the same excitement as we walked over the Millennium Bridge, oh dear :-D

The National Gallery
This museum is incredible. There are a huge collection of famous and beautiful paintings. We admired the collection of the pictures presented in chronological order, starting from 13th century until 19th. It was interesting to see how arts developed. This time we were smarter, we rented the audio guide, so that we had a better understanding of the paintings and their respective histories..

Beside the famous paintings from Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Monet and Rembrandt, there were some other impressive paintings. One is from German painter, *I didn’t write down his name*, he made the first caricature, which was quite strange in his time, in 1500. It was an ugly old man with a body of a woman, strange but funny. The other was the first ad from Venice, a painting from Italian painter. The aim was to make Venice known by the British. It is amazing isn’t it? In 1750 they were already aware of advertisement. :-D Another funny painting was the first cartoon series. The painter was an English man. The series was about the marriage of a son of a lord and a materialistic daughter of a rich trader. The marriage ended in tragedy, both died in an unpleasant way.

This museum is really worth to visit. It can take you days to explore all the pictures. Honestly I can’t do that, 3 hours was enough, but Philipp has another opinion, he could spend more time there. :-P

The National Portrait Gallery
If you want to see how David Beckham looks like while he is sleeping, you have to visit this gallery ;-) Believe me, he is sexy, but not really interesting to look at more than 2 minutes hahaha :-)) There a lot of more interesting pictures that can be observed besides that of Beckham. It was a pity that we didn’t have enough time to browse all levels in the museum.

British Museum
It is the largest museum in London and the collections are from the entire world. It has a diverse collection of paintings ranging from those from Europe until China. The scariest collections were the Egyptian mummies.
I like the collection of money; it was from different countries and from different times, grandiose. After a while in this museum I suffered museum fatigue. My feet couldn’t feel anymore, in the end, I didn’t really enjoy the visit and just sit. :-(

Imperial War Museum
In this museum I learned a bit of the Europeans dark history in the Holocaust Exhibition. Sometimes I can’t understand, why Philipp always wants to see the dark history of his nation, it was very heart-rending :-( Besides Holocaust Exhibition, there was British war exhibition. The Britain was and still is very eager go to the war. What also interesting in this museum was the military equipment, such as tanks and the weapons.

Changing of the Guard
We arrived at 10.30 in front of Buckingham Palace, and the front yard outside the palace was already full of people. Actually the Changing of the Guard starts at 11.30, but if you come late, you wouldn’t get a good place to see that event. I saw a funny thing happened just some minutes before the event took place. There was a group of little girls running excitedly towards the palace, they shouted and laughed. I wondered why, *as always, I am curious and want to know what’s on* and I saw the police opened the palace gate and let those little girls go inside.:-O How lucky they are!
At 11.30 sharp, the new guards came and marched to the palace and disappeared. We couln’t really see what happened next. After ten minutes came other guards, but this time complete with music. It was more interesting than the first one. The police, whom I asked, said that the ceremony took about one hour, and we decided not to wait.

Speaker’s Corner
This funny entertainment happens every Sunday in Hyde Park. There were 5 to 7 people, who gave speech on that day. They talked about different things, politics, religions, morals, and even just nonsense :-P The audience could discuss with them or sometimes they even annoyed the speaker. It was strange but funny. It was cold that day, so we didn’t stay longer than one hour.

Before watching the free speech in Speaker’s Corner, we strolled around the Hyde Park. Hyde Park was nice, probably in summer it is full with people playing football, picnicking, inline skating, or sunbathing, hmm a nice summer activities :-D
On that day was St Patrick’s Day and the Irish community in London went on parade. They started from Hyde Park and went around the city. There were music, marching band, people with costume, and a merry atmosphere. :-)

II. Here we have to pay

Tower of London
My first impression when I saw Tower of London was an astonishment. I felt like back to the ancient time, I know I am a bit exaggerating :-D Tower of London was wonderful, and the view around it was amazing. Luckily I didn’t have to stand in the queue for the tickets. With great enthusiasm I started the tour in Tower of London.

Feeling confused from where I had to start, I followed a crowd of people that took me to the Jewel House. After watching some films about the crowning of the Queen and explanation about all the jewellery I came to the room full of priceless crowns. Gosh! They are gorgeous and must be very heavy. The crowns were made of gold and adorned with diamonds and other precious stones. Anyway, I don’t think they are comfy though :-D
Other valuable collection there were bowls, glasses and mess set, and they all are made of gold. One bowl was really big, I thought it would be a perfect container for Sangrilla or punch fruit for party with 100 people :-D

Still feeling with jewel euphoria, I walked up to the White Tower. Most of the collection in the White Tower is made up of equipment for war, such as suit of armour, swords, etc. The tower itself was big and cold.

From White Tower I continued to Bloody Tower. It was once a prison room and there were pictures of the prisoners, quite frightening.

A unique thing about this tower is the Yeoman Wardens. Allegedly they have watched the Tower for more than 900 years. Those wardens were very kind and helpful, they have many fans too, cause too many people wanted to take picture with them. :-D

Westminster Abbey
I don’t know why I had that eerie feeling when I entered that church, although it was grand. I supposed because of those tombs. There are a lot of tombs with beautiful ornaments, but still, tombs are tombs :-(
I walked around the church area and was amazed the magnificent Gothic style architecture. In Abbey museum there are some other valuable Royal collections, almost similar to those in Jewel House, but in smaller number. I ended my tour by visiting the bookshop. In the bookshop they played church songs and the atmosphere was calm.

BA London’s Eye
The Millennium Wheel is an amazing attraction. It looks interesting during the day and very beautiful in the night with all light accessories. The structure of the wheel is unique, it has different concept than the normal carousel *Philipp explained me several time about the difference, but I don’t understand Structural Engineering :-D *
We ‘flew’ with this carousel for 30 minutes. It was thrilling and the view was fantastic. We can see London from 360 degree points of view. It is more beautiful, since the location is by the river Thames.



Jack the Ripper Walk Tour
One evening we joined a ‘scary’ walk tour called Jack the Ripper. Jack the Ripper was a horrid murderer in East End in 1888. We were guided through the location of the horrific murders. The victims of Jack the Ripper were prostitutes. They called the murderer Jack the Ripper, because he ripped his victims body :-(

The participants of the tour were hundreds. I was afraid, I can’t hear the guide clearly, but he was very well organized, so I shouldn’t worry too much. The tour started from Tower Hill, and then we walked along Whitechapel area, where most of the locations were. It was ended near Spitalfields market. In Spitalfields there were some people juggling at that night. The tour guide said, every evening they do different activities there.
The tour was quite interesting; particularly because we experienced the old filthy area of London.

London Aquarium
If you fancy seeing a plethora of fishes, it is worth to visit this aquarium. There are around 20 different rooms with different fishes from all around the world. The collection was very rich, from predatory fish until ‘Finding Nemo’ fish. It was really fun to observe them.

River Thames Cruise
This attraction is one of a must thing to do during the visit in London. We joined a Greenwich tour. It took about one and half hour from Embankment Pier to Greenwich. It was a sunny day and the trip was lovely.
We passed interesting buildings and beautiful tourist objects, such as Cleopatra’s Needle in Victoria Embankment, from Roman Emperor. Its twin is located in Central Park New York. Furthermore is the beautiful London Eye, the imposing St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the splendid Millennium Bridge. The ship stopped at Tower of London, where some passenger got off. We continued our cruise passing the modern London, Canary Wharf and then we arrived in Greenwich.

Greenwich was cute. We visited the Royal Observatory, where we could see the old and modern of astronomy history. Royal Observatory is home of Greenwich Mean Time. It was a very nice journey that day :-)

There are more reviews, so be patience .. ;)