We started our second last day in London with a ride on the London Eye, a 135-meter-tall observation wheel located on the south bank of the River Thames. Each of the 32 pods can hold up to 28 guests, although it was not that crowded yesterday morning. In continuous motion, the wheel moves slowly enough that passengers step on and off while the wheel keeps turning. A full rotation takes approximately 30 minutes and gives passengers an opportunity to enjoy panoramic views of major city landmarks, including Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and Buckingham Palace.

In the last picture, that’s Buckingham Palace surrounded by trees near the top of the photo.

After disembarking from the Eye, we strolled along the Queen’s Walk, a riverside promenade, to the open-air Globe Theatre, a reconstruction of the original Elizabethan playhouse where William Shakespeare staged many of his most iconic masterpieces. There we had tickets to Much Ado About Nothing. The theatre has 870 bench seats on three levels that wrap around the stage, but we were “groundlings”, audience members who stand in the yard directly in front of the stage.

I wasn’t sure how well we’d handle standing for three hours and I think hubby was even more dubious about it than I was, but if you look closely at the last photo, you’ll see that there’s a ledge along the back wall of the yard. We arrived early enough to claim spots there where we could kind of lean/sit and take some of the weight off our tired feet and legs. I’m not sure that the much more expensive wooden gallery seats would have been any more comfortable and as you can see, we were still positioned very close to the stage. While we waited for the show to begin, we enjoyed a great visit with the couple next to us who were retired teachers from Portsmouth on England’s south coast.

When the play was over, we crossed over the Millennium Bridge, a steel suspension footbridge over the River Thames. St Paul’s Cathedral was directly in front of us and we were heading for the nearby tube station to return to Notting Hill, our home away from home. It was by now, just a few minutes before 5:00 PM and as we passed by the cathedral, I noticed a sign telling us that the Choral Evensong service was about to start. What a great opportunity to see the inside of the enormous church! The service was short, only about half an hour in length, and as in Westminster Abbey on Sunday, we thoroughly enjoyed listening to the pipe organ and the choir. Arriving at last minute as we did, we weren’t seated where we could see the officiants, but we were directly under the massive dome!

I’ve always said that a trip like this one is really three trips in one; the planning, the trip itself, and the memories that you carry with you after. I enjoy all three parts. I had detailed plans for the first four of our five days in London, but on my itinerary today said “Free day to do anything we missed or return to favourites.” One of the things that I thought we’d do early in our visit, but didn’t find time for, was to explore Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park which are a short walking distance from where we’re staying, so that was first on our agenda for today.

Kensington Palace is a historic royal residence that serves as the official London residence for the Prince and Princess of Wales. It’s where King Charles (then Prince Charles) and Princess Diana lived while married and where she continued to live with their boys after they separated. It’s also where Queen Victoria was born and grew up, hence the statue of her in front.

The next photo was taken from across the Round Pond (which is actually rectangular with rounded corners), an ornamental body of water created in the 1720s on the order of King George I, an animal-loving monarch who wanted it to house his pet turtles!

Within Kensington Gardens and adjoining Hyde Park, we walked a portion of The Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Walk, a 7-mile (11 km) circular walking route in central London that guides visitors past historic buildings and scenic parklands associated with the life of Princess Diana.

Still in Kensington Gardens, we stopped to admire the enormous and ornate Albert Memorial commissioned by Queen Victoria after the premature death of her beloved husband who was only 42 years old when he died in December 1861.

The memorial is located across the road from the Royal Albert Hall, a world famous concert hall opened by Queen Victoria on March 29, 1871 to fulfill her husband’s vision for a central hall dedicated to the arts and sciences.

Before leaving Kensington Gardens, I had to locate the Peter Pan statue. Set in Edwardian London, the story of Peter Pan has always had a place in my heart as it was the first movie that I ever saw on the big screen. My mother took me to see it in the Patricia Theatre in Powell River, the town on the BC coast where I was born, when I was about 5 years old.

Continuing our walk, we crossed into adjoining Hyde Park, another of London’s eight royal parks and walked along the Serpentine, a 40-acre recreational lake created in 1730 at the behest of Queen Caroline. 

By the time we reached the far end of the Serpentine, we were less than half a mile from Harrods, the world’s most famous luxury department store, so we headed in that direction. After all, what would a visit to London be without stopping in at Harrods? I think the most I could have afforded there was probably a facecloth, but we spent a little while exploring anyway.

Harrods isn’t the only store on the street though. If you zoom in, you might recognize the signs on some of these smaller ones.

By this time, the fitness app on my phone was telling us that we’d walked more than 11 000 steps already. We found the nearby tube station and headed back to Notting Hill. After relaxing at “home” for awhile, we walked around the block with several destinations in mind. First, even though it meant breaking my diabetic diet, we wanted to try a traditional cream tea. Although it’s served with tea, cream tea isn’t actually tea at all! It’s a light afternoon meal that consists of a large, fresh scone served warm with strawberry jam and clotted cream. To those of us who are unfamiliar with it, clotted cream might sound gross, but it’s actually thick, rich cream made by slowly heating full-fat cow’s milk. The great debate in England is whether you should put the cream on the scone first and then add the jam as the people in Devon do, or put the jam on first followed by the cream as those from Cornwall do. We chose the Cornish method although I’m sure the other would have been just as delicious!

We also stopped at a used bookstore to pick up a book for hubby who’d finished the one he was reading and needed another for the plane tomorrow. There was one other shop that I wanted to visit. This is the view we’ve been looking at out our window ever since we arrived, so of course I had to check out that little vintage store even though I didn’t buy anything. We also wanted to take a closer look at the old stone church that we could see over the rooftops. Although the temple designation made us wonder what it was about, we discovered that it’s actually a Pentecostal church. The building was constructed in 1849.

And that brings our trip to an end! We’ll be on our way to Heathrow Airport very early tomorrow morning and back in Canada before the end of day.