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.

Second day in London

September 14, 2026 / edebock / 4 Comments

First of all, a big thank you to everyone who wished us a Happy 50th Anniversary on social media after reading yesterday’s post! We definitely felt the love!

Today was another very full day. We woke up to drizzly rain, but it was hard to feel bad about it considering the fact that England has suffered extreme drought this summer and desperately needs the moisture.

We started our day by attending the 11:15 AM Sung Eucharist service at Westminster Abbey, the historic Gothic church in central London that has hosted every British coronation since 1066. We arrived almost an hour before the service was to begin securing a place near the front of the line and as a result, we ended up sitting in the second row of chairs at the front of the sanctuary! The service was very formal and liturgical, but also very meaningful. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take any pictures inside the church, but photos wouldn’t have captured the sound of the magnificent pipe organ or the voices of the Abbey Choir.

When we exited Westminster station prior to walking the short distance to the abbey, I knew that Big Ben was supposed to be right in front of us, but I didn’t see it at first. Why? Because it was so much bigger than I expected! At 96 metres (approximately 315 feet) it was towering over us and it wasn’t until I looked way up that I realized it was there!

Many of today’s photos didn’t turn out very well because of the gloomy weather, but I decided not to take one that I had planned on. Several of London’s old red phone booths have been strategically placed across the street in such a way that a person can have their photo taken beside one of them with Big Ben in the background. While that would have been a fun picture to have, I wasn’t willing to stand in one of the long lines of people waiting for a turn to take the coveted photo. Instead, we went around the corner where hubby took this one which I think is quite delightful even without Big Ben in the background.

Before long, I was happy to leave that very congested part of the city behind us. We found lunch in a quiet cafe in the corner of nearby St James’s Park, one of London’s eight Royal Parks. We were happy to discover that we were able to walk most of the way to Buckingham Palace through the beautiful and peaceful park.

I have to admit that both of us were a bit underwhelmed by Buckingham Palace. The Victoria Monument in front seemed more impressive than the palace itself.

After all the amazing and enormous structures that we’ve seen over the past few days both here and in Istanbul, Buckingham Palace seemed rather plain. Of course, we were viewing it from outside the ornate iron fence and gates that are roughly 50 to 60 metres (160 to 200 feet) from the face of the building. I didn’t realize how big it actually was until I noticed how tiny the two palace guards looked!

I love my zoom lens!

I didn’t quite finish this post last evening as the internet in our little home away from home wasn’t cooperating, so I’ll finish up now…

Sometimes it’s the unexpected things that we discover quite by accident while seeing a city on foot that we find the most delightful. That was the case with Leicester Square somewhere between Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus in the middle of London’s entertainment district. With the William Shakespeare statue and fountain as its centrepiece, it was a relaxing spot to stop for a break.

We also met quite a few interesting characters in the square including Harry Potter…

Paddington…

And even Mr Bean!

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!