Our European vacation; Part 1 Coming to England.

Tower Bridge!

The genesis of this trip was actually a Viking River Cruise ad we received in the mail! Of course, we had been thinking of a trip to Hadrian's Wall before, but we noticed that Viking was offering airfare with an allowance for a layover in London for a small additional fee.

I did some research and finally settled on booking a hike along Hardian's Wall with Contours Walking Holidays. They turned out to be a fine company to deal with. They arranged each night's accommodation and also transferred our luggage each night. later, our friends Bob and Deb wanted to join us and Contours arranged that as well, even asking us if it was okay for them to join us!

Following the wall along the crags of Northumbria.

I took it upon myself to book all the other hotels for the rest of our stay in the U.K. I figured out which trains to take to get where we wanted, and I even booked a rental car for an excursion to Scotland after our walk.

I've divided this trip description into 4 parts: Part 1, Coming to England. Part 2 will describe our walk along Hadrian's Wall. Part 3 will cover our trips to Scotland and Bath and Part 4 will cover our Rhine Cruise.

Our first day was the 10 hour flight to London, arriving early in the morning. I should mention that all flights were arranged by Viking and were generally at lousy times! After getting through Customs, (very nice folks at the British Customs points, incidentally), we caught a train to Victoria Station and made our way to our hotel, (St. George's at Pimlico). Of course it was much too early to check in, but the staff let us leave our luggage at the hotel.

At Buckingham Palace.

We wandered around, discovering that our hotel was actually pretty close to a lot of the famous London sites. We passed by Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus, Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, saw Westminster Abbey and looked down Downing Street, but Security points make it impossible to get to "#10".

Saw a troop of Calvary pass the Palace and then came upon their Barracks! Very sharp uniforms!

 The next day we got an Underground pass and went off to see Greenwich. Being a bit of a nerd, I wanted to check out the Observatory there and see the Prime Meridian.

The wonderful view from the Greenwich Observatory.

 Actually, near the observatory are several interesting points of interest, including the actual Cutty Sark, an unusual pedestrian tunnel that goes under the Thames, a Maritime Museum and the Observatory itself. After viewing what we could of the Cutty Sark, (without actually paying for anything), we then walked under the Thames using the tunnel and looked back at the south side. Finally we made our way to the Observatory, walking through a pretty park on a very nice day.

The entrance to the tunnel under the Thames. In the distance you can make out it's counterpart on the far side of the river!

A look inside the tunnel.

Here I am at 0 degrees Longitude!

The funny thing about the Prime Meridian is that they kept changing it way back when! First, the French established one running through Paris, then it was transferred to Greenwich, but since then had been moved over a couple of times! I'm pretty sure they have it nailed down now.

After touring the Observatory we hopped back on the Underground to do some more sightseeing as we had an unlimited pass for the day. We noticed one stop was for London Bridge so we hopped off and checked it out. We found that Tower Bridge was just down the river a bit so walked down and snapped a few selfies.

At Tower Bridge.

After getting back on the train, we figured out which stop was close to the Beatles "Abbey Road Crossing" and headed there. Leaving the station at the stop we walked down a nondescript suburban street, wondering how we were going to figure out where it was. Then we came to a crowded intersection and heard Beatles' music playing! Yeah, think we found it! There were all sorts of folks there posing for pictures and crossing back and forth, we did too of course. I felt bad for anybody who has to drive that intersection on a regular basis.

Yes, everybody does this!

 Getting back on the train we noticed that one stop was Baker Street! We hopped off and checked it out. There is actually no 221B Baker Street if your following the street numbers. There is of course a somewhat cheesy Holmes Museum but its more like 232 Baker Street. We checked out the gift shop but declined the chance to go into the museum.

No, not really 221B.

That was about the end of our second day in London, the next day we were to board the train to Newcastle to begin our Hadrian's Wall Adventure!

At the Train Station, we did notice a strange platform at King's Cross.