London Walk

This morning I went on a London Walk. A friend of mine who is an expert of sorts on London told me that his favorite thing to do here are go on these walks. They are guided walks with themes. www.walks.com is the website. Today I went with Mel and Tracy on the "Hidden London" walk. It was REALLY COOL!!! I learned a LOT from this walk! and I really enjoyed it!
some things that I learned today:This is a small model of the (real) London Bridge and the rumor I heard was true! The real London bridge was sold to Robert B McCollic for 1 million pounds (that's a LOT of money!) it was shipped to New York and it was labled in customs as a "large antique" and then brought down to Lake Havasu Arizona where it is today and you can take double decker buss rides across.

This is Tracy and me with a piece of the original London Bridge that is still here in London.

-Why London drives on the left side of the road:
-As you can see in the Model there were houses and shops built right on the bridge. So with all of the shops and all of the people the bridge would get pretty congested and there wasn't much room at all. so in 1722 Lord Mayor of London said that people must travel across the bridge on the left side. This also made easy access for men you be able to get their swords as well so that was convenient. And because London was doing it - all of england had to folllow.
then Napoleon came along years later and he was left handed plus he resented the British - so in Paris he changed it to the right side of the road. in 1831.

-On a lot of old buildings here in London you will see seals on the sides of buildings:

this was to show which guild/company owned the land

As we were walking along we heard a marching band plying "Who's on the Lord's Side Who" It was the Marine Band! Right outside of St. Pauls Cathedral...okay maybe it was just the tune and there were in actuality playing a different song- but it was cool reguarless.
Then a car drove behind them and our tour guide said - Oh there is the Lord Mayor of London - probably going home. I didn't get a look at him but my friend said that he was wearing one of those ridiculous long curly white wigs. Then there was another car coming and he said " Well its the Queen and Prince Phillip"

YEP!!! There she is! Her Royal Highness herself! in her classy hat, with Prince Phillip sitting next to her! Kind of hard to see in the car but pretty cool eh!?! our tour guide then said, "well there she is- I have only ever seen the queen twice in my life"
and we moved along with our walk! HA!!! I have only been here for 10 days! and I got to see the Queen! We were excited!!! This is a photo of St Paul's Cathedral that I took today -where the Queen was departing from.
Another thing I learned...
Back in the day not many people knew how to read - but when servants needed to go and make deliveries and such to different houses instead of an address card they would have a picture card - with a picture of the fan light - which is the designed glass above the door. So they would just have to find the picture that matched up with the door fan light and they knew they were in the right place. Here are a couple examples:























See the difference in the designs! pretty cool huh?! these were two doors that were next door to each other.

After the walking tour we came home- grabbed some lunch - then Melanie and I went to:
Here everyone calls it the V&A.
It is HUGE!! I saw all kind of exhibits: Fashion, Photography, Jewlery, Iron, glass, etc... here are a couple pictures from the museum...

I LOVE this glass sculpture! SO COOL!

there was also a garden court yard area...look how pretty...

...yeah those are lemon trees! cool huh!!

So later on after the museum there was a group of us that were going to go out and hear some live jazz music. We got to the place and there was a line to get in and I discovered that if we come a bit earlier or on a different night we can get in for free. So some of us decided that we could wait and headed back home again. We stopped in a McDonalds on the way home to get some 54 pence ice-cream cones.
(This is me, Jessica, Bre, and Wallace)

I asked the guy if i could have a chocolate one and he said it was 64 pence. I thought to myself "huh that's weird I wonder why chocolate ice-cream costs more than vanilla." but paid and watched as he proceeded to go and make a vanilla ice-cream cone for me. then he went and stuck a little chocolate log into it.
so this....is London's version of a chocolate ice-cream cone. HAHA!