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Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 ENGLAND: LONDON
AND THE COTSWOLDS BANKSIDE & ST. PAUL'S
Saturday, May 14.
Our plan was to spend the two
weekends we were in England with
Andy and Liz and be off on our own
most of the other days when they
would be working. This being
Saturday, we would spend it with
them. We were up at 7:00, a bit earlier than usual but a good sign that we were adjusting to the time change. Andy made a big breakfast, and we visited with him and Liz for the rest of the morning. At 13:00 we took the tube to Borough Market in Central London. With its ideal location near one end of London Bridge , there has been a food market near this site for at least a thousand years. The present market, however, tends more toward fashionable specialty foods and meals for tourists. By now it was 14:00 and we were ready for lunch. We tried a fish & chips stand and the food was pretty good.
Afterward we strolled the short distance to the Thames. This area is called Bankside. There we saw a replica of the Golden Hinde II, the ship in which Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe (1577-1580). We followed the river to the Globe Theater, a 1997 replica of the one built nearby in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company. We took the 15:00 tour of the building and found it very interesting.
The Millennial Footbridge (2000) was just a short distance away, and we used it to cross the Thames to St. Paul's Cathedral (1710). This landmark sits on Ludgate Hill, the highest spot in London. (At about 50 feet elevation, it is hard to tell.) Jane and I had toured it twice before (1961 & 2005), but we still were disappointed to find that it closed at 16:30, just as we walked up the steps to go in.
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