London - Part I

10 April 08 - London

The train from Salisbury to London Waterloo Station took about 2 hours. From there I bought a day tube pass to get from Waterloo to Paddington, where my hotel was.




I have read from the online review about how expensive the hotels in London are and how small the rooms typically are. However I didn't expect it to be this small though. It's small like a peanut, where I can hardly move around and if I setup my laptop on the desk, I can hardly find a space for my mouse... gee...





After dumping the heavy luggage in the hotel, I couldn't wait to go to London downtown. It is very convenient and economical to buy a day tube pass which costs only 5.30 pounds wheareas if you buy a single way within Zone 1 or 2, it already costs 4 pounds.

My first stop was the famous London Eye by River Thames (Tube stop : Embankment).







I have been to London 6-7 years ago. At that time the Big Bus Tour costs only 10 pounds for a hop-on-and-off trip around all the major attractions at downtown London. To my amazement, now it costs 24 POUNDS!!! WOW!!! Since I know where I wanted to go, I decided to fully utilize my tube pass, with the help of a copy of tube map, London road map and a free attraction guide from the Big Bus Company which I picked up from the hotel lobby.





I walked towards the Westminster Tube Station, where the Big Ben is.






Getting into the Westminster Station, I took the tube to the London Bridge Station:





Frankly speaking, London Bridge is not beautiful at all, it is just a very ordinary bridge I must say. I guess everyone has heard of the song 'London Bridge is falling down', but do you know why is it falling down??? Oh well, if you get the chance to walk across the bridge towards The Monument, you will see tonnes and tonnes of people walking towards you, endlessly... It is what I call, a 'black and white crowd', as they are mostly white collars wearing either black or grey coat.







Since they are mostly black and white, let me just tune my camera to the right setting then...




There were just endless of these crowds...





The view of Tower Bridge from London Bridge:








The nearer view of Tower Bridge:



From The Monument, I took a tube to the Tower of London. This is the garden opposite of Tower of London:


































To be continued...