London Day 2
It still doesn't sound right to me as I say it
silently to myself before I am about to write it, but the thought is the same
right now as it was this morning: "Thank God for
Starbuck's."
I slept a magnificent 10 hours. A sound woke me up once in the middle of the night, but I was back asleep before I mobilized to find out what time it was. At 7:30 am, my brain was screaming coffee. Somewhere, I had heard about how horrible the coffee is here in London, so I headed to Starbuck's next to King's Cross station. I admit that I felt guilty for ducking into Starbuck's, and that I probably missed out on a really good local coffee shop. But for £2.50, that's FIVE bucks, I needed good coffee, and the brew at Starbuck's was just like the one back home. It was the safe bet. They got me.
My intent was to go into the Tower of London, but much to my dismay, the entrance fee was £13! Last night, at a local pub called "The Drop," I had an amazing dinner of 3 slabs of roast beef, 2 scooped ice cream sized scoops of mashed potatoes, 2 broiled potatoes, a heaping mound of peas, and steamed cabbage and (i think) kale, WITH 2 pints of ice cold beer for £10! That may sound expensive, but believe me, 10 pounds goes here like THAT! <snapping fingers>. Plus, over dinner and light reading, I had a real live drama unfolding on the pool table, with a vulgar mouthed patron talking mad game to his deaf friend. And another patron "properly soiled his pants" when his hand was nearly bitten off by a dog under a table that no one knew was there. So, for me to pay £13 to look at the grizzly sights of past executions, and to feast my eyes on jewels that I could never touch was asking alot. I did a lap around the Tower, and headed over the Tower Bridge onto the South Bank in search of Shakespeare's Globe theater. I bought a £5 standing room only ticket for tonight's performance of "Merchant of Venice."
I also waked the Millennium Bridge, which is shown in the picture above. It's affectionately called the "wobbly bridge" by Londoners i think because of the fiasco when it opened. The bridge uses a technology called "lateral suspension." Indeed, this is a suspension bridge, like the Golden Gate back home, but the engineering allows it to be built without tall supporting columns. Thousands were present to cross the bridge on its opening day. As they crossed the bridge, a slight wind shifted the bridge back and forth, which was a part of its design, but that forced all of the people to shift their weight accordingly, and like harmonic resonance, each shift of weight in the people's feet increased the swaying of the bridge to the point that a dramatic wobble soon took over. They had to shit the bridge down! Engineers have since fixed the problem by inserting dampeners along the bridge.
The Millennium Bridge takes one (when coming from the south) directly to St. Paul's Cathedral. An entrance fee and rules against photography persuaded against me going in for a tour.
Looking East from the Millennium Bridge to the Tower Bridge.
I slept a magnificent 10 hours. A sound woke me up once in the middle of the night, but I was back asleep before I mobilized to find out what time it was. At 7:30 am, my brain was screaming coffee. Somewhere, I had heard about how horrible the coffee is here in London, so I headed to Starbuck's next to King's Cross station. I admit that I felt guilty for ducking into Starbuck's, and that I probably missed out on a really good local coffee shop. But for £2.50, that's FIVE bucks, I needed good coffee, and the brew at Starbuck's was just like the one back home. It was the safe bet. They got me.
My intent was to go into the Tower of London, but much to my dismay, the entrance fee was £13! Last night, at a local pub called "The Drop," I had an amazing dinner of 3 slabs of roast beef, 2 scooped ice cream sized scoops of mashed potatoes, 2 broiled potatoes, a heaping mound of peas, and steamed cabbage and (i think) kale, WITH 2 pints of ice cold beer for £10! That may sound expensive, but believe me, 10 pounds goes here like THAT! <snapping fingers>. Plus, over dinner and light reading, I had a real live drama unfolding on the pool table, with a vulgar mouthed patron talking mad game to his deaf friend. And another patron "properly soiled his pants" when his hand was nearly bitten off by a dog under a table that no one knew was there. So, for me to pay £13 to look at the grizzly sights of past executions, and to feast my eyes on jewels that I could never touch was asking alot. I did a lap around the Tower, and headed over the Tower Bridge onto the South Bank in search of Shakespeare's Globe theater. I bought a £5 standing room only ticket for tonight's performance of "Merchant of Venice."
I also waked the Millennium Bridge, which is shown in the picture above. It's affectionately called the "wobbly bridge" by Londoners i think because of the fiasco when it opened. The bridge uses a technology called "lateral suspension." Indeed, this is a suspension bridge, like the Golden Gate back home, but the engineering allows it to be built without tall supporting columns. Thousands were present to cross the bridge on its opening day. As they crossed the bridge, a slight wind shifted the bridge back and forth, which was a part of its design, but that forced all of the people to shift their weight accordingly, and like harmonic resonance, each shift of weight in the people's feet increased the swaying of the bridge to the point that a dramatic wobble soon took over. They had to shit the bridge down! Engineers have since fixed the problem by inserting dampeners along the bridge.
The Millennium Bridge takes one (when coming from the south) directly to St. Paul's Cathedral. An entrance fee and rules against photography persuaded against me going in for a tour.
Looking East from the Millennium Bridge to the Tower Bridge.
Posted: Mon - September 3, 2007 at 05:55 PM
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Published On: Sep 03, 2007 05:55 PM
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Published On: Sep 03, 2007 05:55 PM