Happy Christmas, y'all!
Bich awoke Christmas morning and discovered the joys of London's bike system: Right outside our hotel was a stand of rental bikes. Pop in your card, and for a pound a day, you have access wherever you need, paying for as long as you actually use the bikes. The bikes stands are everywhere. If you return the bikes to any stand around the city within 30 minutes, it's free -- a great way to spider-web-travel around. We quickly found London to be a super-bike-friendly city, easy to maneuver on the roads and perfect, low-cost transportation. And they were nice breaks from walking (our "short" walking day in London probably still covered five miles).
Anyway, we hopped on bikes and headed to Trafalgar Square for the Samuel Pepys (that's "peeps") Christmas Day Walk, a two-hour historic walk following the life of writer Pepys. A few shots from around the square and the near environs:
Countdown to the Summer Olympics
The National Gallery, or Where's Brooke? (she's there, so find her)
Our guide and our rather large group (we skipped the later Dickens walk
because hundreds of people showed up and I was not having that).
Heavily fortified 10 Downing Street, the black building with the tree in front. Little-known fact: The British prime minister lives at 11 Downing. Ten is now mostly office space.
Parliament
Palace of Westminster's clock tower, home of Big Ben
Victoria Embankment Gardens
Where Samuel Pepys lived
Instead of the Dickens walk we'd originally scheduled for right after, we decided to walk, then grab bikes, and ... realized we were not far from Buckingham Palace. Lord, that was a realization of how dumb we are.
Along The Mall toward the palace was St. James Park, full of walkers. The entire city, really, was packed full of people.
The palace, in the distance
The Victoria Memorial
Palace gates
Canada Gate
Canada Memorial, Green Park
With nothing working or open on Christmas, that included ... sanitation workers. We watched two tourists just toss their trash on the pile, and I muttered "Obnoxious" ... they heard me. I'm not sorry.
We biked Constitution Hill, reaching the Wellington Arch, near the Knightsbridge section. So we dropped off our bikes and started walking, taking pictures.
Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, aka Where the Rich Folk Stay
Rich was thrilled one of the world's most famous -- and expensive -- stores was shuttered for the day.
And what did we find open but a ... French brasserie in Brompton.
And then we walked to Chelsea, where we found a great bar called Trafalgar ... that was closing. Turns out, the pubs are open for dinner during the day and close at night on Christmas. But they warmly welcomed us and served us excellent beer.
So we picked up new bikes and trekked home.
Along the way, we found Daniel's London mark!
Back to Trafalgar Square.
Here's the thing about Christmas Day in London: Nothing is open. Even most of Chinatown was closed, and the places that were open had very long lines. So we found one a little farther out, because I was starving and had to eat before my fangs came out. At that point, it almost didn't matter what I was served, which is good, because I found the food "meh."
Korean beer Rich had never heard of. Really light and dry, but ok.
One of the largest mussels Rich has ever eaten.
Squid in spicy brown sauce
Seafood udon noodles
Unimpressive dumplings
And the only bars open were hotel bars. So we headed back to ours for some rose and Czech beer.
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