Last day in London.....

And it's not even a full day. We jumped up, took showers and took off, leaving a few bags at the hotel for the day. We had until about 4:00pm to get to the airport, so we wanted to use today as best we could. We had initially thought of going to Portobello Road for the market and to see Notting Hill, but didn't realize that it was all pretty much closed on Sunday. Instead of going there, we jumped to our second destination of the day, and it worked out for the best.

We were visiting the Globe Theatre today. We arrived just after the exhibit opened and paid our admission. About 15 minutes after we arrived, the tour started. We were shown the theatre and had a wonderful presentation by a woman that had been involved in the theatre since the beginning. The Globe Theatre is actually a reproduction of the original, and it was reopened in 1997. The theatre was designed to be as similar to the original theatre as possible, but has some safety features that the first didn't have. I was really happy we took the tour. After the tour, we went back to the exhibit and finished wandering the halls there, checking out the clothing, reproduction techniques, phamplet and play printing press, and various stashes of props from previous productions. I like the theatre, but can get bored with it quickly, but this was not one of those days. I really had fun.



We took a few pictures of the Millennium Bridge (from Harry Potter), and set off for lunch.



We did a little more gift shopping and then decided to walk to Big Ben. The walk caught us off guard, it was a bit further than I realized, but I knew where we were going. Finally, after 30 minutes or so, we arrived at the location of The Eye of London and were the Cologne German Christmas Market had been set up. Karen and I snapped some daylight pictures of Big Ben and The Houses of Parliament. They both still looked so cool!



We wrapped up our day eating Indian in the first place that we had eaten when we arrived, a fitting and delicious end to an awesome trip.

The trip home = not the greatest experience, but it could have been much worse. We made it, and on time. 'Nuf said.

More pictures from today: http://s290.photobucket.com/albums/ll256/sandalscout/GB%202010-2011/Jan%202-Last%20Day%20in%20London/?start=all
and from the whole trip (sub-albums are on the right side of the screen, down a little): http://s290.photobucket.com/albums/ll256/sandalscout/GB%202010-2011/