Last two days in London

September 16, 2026 / edebock / 8 Comments

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.

First day in London

September 12, 2026September 13, 2026 / edebock / 3 Comments

On October 2, Richard and I will have been married for fifty years. 50! Fifty years of ups and downs, joys and sorrows. Seeing and experiencing new places and cultures has long been something that we’ve loved to do together. That’s why about a year ago when I started thinking about how we might celebrate this momentous milestone, it was obvious to me that it needed to involve travel. But where should we go? We considered everything from hiking in the Azores to a cruise down the Nile River, but before we settled on a definite plan, the possibility of another short term mission trip came to our attention. At first, we thought that we’d be returning to Armenia where we served in May/June of last year. Eventually, however, we learned that we’d be going to Istanbul, Türkiye just one month before our big anniversary. We started to look at how we might combine the two into one trip. As a result, here we are on our way home from Istanbul spending five days in London, England celebrating 50 years together a wee bit before the actual anniversary!

Our home away from home this week is an aparthotel in Notting Hill. After breakfast this morning, we head for Portobello Road Market, less than half a kilometre away. Stretching about a mile along Portobello Road, this is one of the world’s most famous and historical street markets offering antiques and collectables, vintage clothing, jewelry, artwork, fresh fruit and vegetables, a variety of street foods, and much, much more. Saturday is the market’s busiest day and I read that we should plan to arrive early to beat the crowds. That was definitely good advice! When we arrived shortly after 9:00 AM, some of the vendors were still setting up and the street was quiet, but within an hour or so, it was absolutely packed with people.

Of course, we had to pop into the souvenir shop that appeared as the fictional Travel Bookshop in the 1999 romatic comedy, Notting Hill, starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts.

After leaving the market, next on our agenda was our first ride on the “Tube”, the world’s oldest subway system. Our destination was massive St Paul’s Cathedral. The original cathedral was destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666. Construction on its replacement started nine years later in 1675 and it was completed in 1710. With its iconic dome, it was the tallest building in London for 250 years. The total height to the top of the cross on the dome is exactly 365 feet. The chief architect, Sir Christopher Wren, intentionally designed it that way to represent each day of the year. Apparently he also wanted there to be a 60 foot high stone pineapple on top of the dome as a symbol of peace, prosperity, and hospitality, but he settled for golden pineapples on top of the two western towers instead!

I was totally blown away by the sheer enormity of St Paul’s. To put it into perspective for those of you back home, the cathedral is significantly bigger than the Alberta Legislature Building in Edmonton!

In 1981, the cathedral hosted the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana and it has been the location of massive state funerals for figures like Sir Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.

After enjoying coffee and tea in an outdoor cafe next to the cathedral, we walked about a mile to the Garden at 120, a free 15th floor rooftop garden in the heart of London’s financial district that offers 360-degree panoramic views of the city skyline.

From there, we caught our first glimpses of the River Thames, the Tower of London, and the Tower Bridge.

Continuing our walk another half mile or so brought us to the Tower of London. Again, it was much more enormous and not at all what I expected. Named after its first building, the White Tower, which was built by William the Conqueror in the 1070s as a royal fortress, the Tower was also a palace with grand apartments where the king and queen could entertain and conduct business. As at St Paul’s, we chose to walk around and view the Tower from the outside rather than joining a tour that would take us inside.

In 1100, the Tower became an infamous prison where many prisoners including Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII, and Sir Thomas More, who refused to recognize Henry’s separation from the Catholic church, were beheaded or hanged. Over its nearly 1000 year history, it has been adapted and repurposed for many different roles even including a zoo or royal menagerie from the 13th century until 1835.

By this time, we had done a lot of walking. Our feet and legs were tired and we had no intention of crossing the Tower Bridge, but suddenly we were there and Richard decided that we really should, so on we went!

From the far side, we made our way to the closest Tube station and headed “home” tired, but happy for all we’d seen and done.

Istanbul highlights

September 10, 2026 / edebock / 2 Comments

We came to Türkiye (Turkey) on a short term missions trip, but after finishing that assignment and becoming tourists, we’ve fit a lot into less than 48 hours in Istanbul!

Located in the heart of historic Istanbul, our tiny, family run hotel is tucked into a little alleyway just off a busy street.

Our window looks out over the street and the entrance to beautiful Gülhane Park. Now a very busy and popular urban park, Gülhane was once the outer garden of nearby Topkapi Palace and only accessible to the royal court.

Our hotel is also only a 5 minute walk from the Hagia Sofia Grand Mosque, quite possibly Istanbul’s most famous landmark. Since it’s construction was completed in 537 AD, it has served first as a Christian cathedral, then an Ottoman mosque, a secular museum, and now an active mosque once again. Unfortunately, it’s presently undergoing renovation, so we didn’t get an unobstructed view of it.

As non Muslims, we couldn’t enter the main worship portion of the mosque, but we did take what we now consider a badly overpriced tour of the portion that’s open to the general public. There is a very strict dress code for all who enter. Men cannot be wearing shorts and women must wear a head scarf and have their shoulders covered.

Just across the Sultanahmet Square from the Hagia Sofia is a second beautiful mosque, the Sultan Ahmet Mosque which is more commonly known as the Blue Mosque because of the thousands of blue ceramic tiles that decorate its interior walls.

Again, we couldn’t enter the main portion of the mosque which is only open to Muslims, but we were free to wander the outer courtyard.

After meeting some of the team that we served with over the past week for supper last night, we returned to Sultanahmet Square to see the Blue Mosque lit up at night. The meaning of the banner is “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”

The Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque are only two of the more than 3000 mosques spread across the city, so it’s not surprising that wherever we were (including in our hotel room at about 5 o’clock in the morning), we could hear the very loud calls to prayer that ring out from the tall minarets at five different times throughout the day and night!

This morning, we walked about a kilometre to the Grand Bazaar, one of the oldest and largest covered markets in the world. Founded in the 15th century shortly after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (now Istanbul), it contains over 60 covered streets and nearly 4000 tiny shops selling everything from jewelry to clothes to carpets, leather goods, ceramics, and spices. It was like wandering a ginormous shopping mall.

Located on both sides of the Bosphorus, a narrow strait that connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and separates Europe from Asia, Istanbul is a huge city that is located partially on each continent! About two-thirds of its population live in Europe and the rest reside in Asia. We are staying on the European side, but after leaving the Grand Bazaar today, we made our way to the Asian side via the Marmaray, a commuter rail line that connects the two continents through an underwater tunnel beneath the Bosphorus. There, we strolled the Üsküdar Coast Walkway, a stunning promenade along the shimmering blue water. At the end of the walkway, we found a marina and an open air restaurant where we enjoyed some fish and chips while watching boats of all sizes making their way in and out of the strait.

A post about this city wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the cats of Istanbul! An estimated 250 000 street cats live freely and harmoniously alongside the human population of approximately 16 million. Roaming freely through the markets, mosques, cafes, and subway stations, they are treated as community pets rather than strays. Shopkeepers and residents routinely leave out fresh water and food for them.