Yeah, I'm a tourist

Thursday, 21 June 2012

Thursday, I decided to play the hardcore tourist, so a friend and I went on a bus tour around London. We had been wanting to go since the first week, but our schedules never really matched up, so when they matched up on Thursday, we decided to go on the tour. I thought getting on the bus that it might be a waste of time because I’d already seen a lot of London’s main attractions in the four weeks I’d been there. But boy was I wrong.

London's City Hall

The beginning of the bus tour took us around the part of London that I’ve spent most of my time in. We drove down Oxford Street, through Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square, down the river past Big Ben and Parliament, and down Fleet Street to St. Paul’s, all things I had already seen. But then we went into the other part of London, one I hadn’t been to yet. London, like New York and its boroughs, is split into two different “cities,” the City of Westminster and the City of London. I had spent most of my time in the City of Westminster, because that’s where Regent’s College is and most of the site seeing is there as well. The City of London is the business and financial district, but it also has a lot of things that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. The first thing I got to see was an egg-shaped building, which surprisingly, is the city hall. Also, in the distance, was the Shard, which, when completed, will be the tallest skyscraper in all of London. After that, we drove down Tower Bridge, which was really cool, because I had only seen it from afar previously. Also on our drive, we drove past the Monument, which is a memorial in remembrance of the Great London Fire.

John Lennon memorablilia 

We also got to see the original Hard Rock Café, which we decided to go to for dinner. When we got there, the wait was an hour and a half, but we decided to stay because we were craving food we were used to and we wanted to be able to say that we ate at the original Hard Rock. While we waited, we went into the gift shop, which is built on top of the vault where they keep memorabilia not on display. Since we had time to spare, we decided to go down into the vault. There, we got to see lots of guitars belonging to famous musicians, including Gene Simmons’ ax, Les Paul’s Les Paul guitar, and Sting’s bass. We also got to see John Lennon’s jacket and a pair of his glasses and one of Madonna’s bustier. When we got done in the vault, we still had a bit of a wait, so we decided to grab a drink and hang out on the porch until our table was ready.