Westminster and St. James

I went on this walk with Tara, Kaylee, Scott and Hannah. Kaylee was our leader and she did a wonderful job. This was one of my more favorite walks because we got to walk past some of the most beautiful sights in London. Parliament never ceases to amaze me, especially walking out of the tube station and it's just right there in front of you. I appreciated that this walk took me to pretty famous places that I probably wouldn't have found on my own. It was cool to walk past what's left of Whitehall palace and I especially liked walking through Horse Guard Parade and seeing where the Trooping of the Colours would be held later in June. It was kind of funny to me to walk through some of the streets we walked through because there were all these super high end men's stores. I feel like normally the high end stores are for women, but there was literally an entire street full of super expensive shops for men. I feel like this is one of the cultural differences between America and England. Men dress up more often and nicer in England than they do in the states. I loved walking past Buckingham as well. Even though I was there for the Royal Wedding, it was nice to see it when there weren't a million people outside it. Westminster Abbey was gorgeous as usual but I liked walking around the back of it and by the Jewel Tower. That was a really pretty area that I hadn't seen before.

Horse Guard Parade

Buckingham Palace

Inns of Court

I went on this walk with Tara, Hannah and Amy, with Amy as our leader. It was at the bottom of my favorites list. I just didn't enjoy this walk very much at all. This very well could be my own fault because we were running short on time so we didn't have as much time to stop and enjoy things as much as we usually do but mainly I just felt like there wasn't anything super significant or interesting to see. There were a lot of really pretty buildings. London has such a variety of architecture and that's one of my favorite things about London and I thought this walk had some great architecture to see so that was cool. We also found this great little rose garden, which was beautiful and really added to the sights of the walk. I was pretty disappointed in myself though because somehow I was being completely oblivious when we went through the Knights Templar area. I don't know how I didn't realize where we were but I wasn't so happy with myself after the fact. Maybe that added to my dislike of this walk...So all in all, though it wasn't a favorite walk, it did have some really pretty buildings along the way, which I appreciated.

Stopping to smell the roses

Bloomsbury

Tara, Catherine and I did this walk together. Tara and I shared leadership responsibilities, which always seems to go pretty well because we rarely get lost when we lead together. When I was first looking at where we would be going during this walk, I wasn't super excited about it because it didn't look like we would be seeing anything too cool. But it actually ended up being a pretty nice walk. It was a way nice day to do a walk and it was a nice area to walk through. I liked seeing the British Museum, which I hadn't been to before. It was pretty funny because when we were on the back side of the Museum, we asked a lady walking by to take our picture and she laughed and said "Sure, I take pictures for lots of people when I pass by here." It was kind of a reminder that although we've been here in London for a while, we still are the typical tourists sometimes. I thought that Russell Square was pretty interesting because it was kind of a half park and half cemetery thing. I love all the parks that are all over London though. They add a lot to my London experience. I felt like we walked through a lot of residential areas on this walk, which I liked because the only residential area I'm ever in is here on Palace Court. I also thought the Hospital for Sick Children was one of the funniest things. That's probably really rude sounding, but it just made be laugh that they would give their hospital such an obvious name. I'm not sure if that's a cultural thing though because there were some other hospital type things right around the Hospital for Sick Children, and they were pretty bluntly title as well. All of us enjoyed Dickens house. It was closed when we walked by, but it was still cool to see where he lived when he wrote some of his novels. Once we got back around to the front side of the British Museum, I was pretty excited and then quickly disappointed. I hadn't realized how late it was getting and the Museum had just closed, so we couldn't even get inside the gates, but it looked like an amazing building and I'm excited to go back and go inside and see all the amazing things it has inside.

The lion behind the British Museum

Knocking on Dicken's door

Bankside and Southwark Part 2

Finishing this walk was just as fabulous as starting it. Hannah and I started from where we had left off and the whole thing was gorgeous. We saw the London Bridge from afar, which was cool because I hadn't seen it up close yet. But even still, the walk didn't take us super close to it, so I made a mental note to go back and visit later. Then we were walking along the Thames again, which is always beautiful. Even though the water is absolutely disgusting looking, I love looking at the skyline from either side and seeing all of the great buildings that I can actually name now. I also thought it was cool to walk past the HMS Belfast. I didn't even know it was going to be there, nor did I know anything about it. When I got home I was able to find out that it was used in World War II and is now a museum. It would be interesting to go back and check it out, especially because it's World War II information from an English perspective. I've always been interested in World War II and I think it would be so cool to see the battleships in Hawaii and now I could go see the Belfast as well. My favorite part of this walk was walking across the Tower Bridge. It made me feel like I was in Disneyland, which is one of my favorite places on the whole planet. It was a gorgeous bridge with an amazing view and I loved it! I also thought that the Tower of London was awesome and I can't wait to go back to that.

HMS Belfast and the Tower Bridge

Hannah and I on Tower Bridge

Bankside and Southwark Part 1

Hannah and I attempted to do this walk together one day. It started out a little crazy because we couldn't get off at the right tube stop due to closures. But once we figured out where to go and how to get the walk started, it went well. I loved the bridge we got to cross to go on the other side of the Thames. It offered a great view. It was a gorgeous walk in general though. I was excited to see the Millennium Bridge because up until then, I had only seen it at night. There were also some cool little sites along the streets such as the original site of the Globe Theatre and the remains of a rose window. Both Hannah and I loved the Southwark Cathedral. We explored that for quite a while and it was an amazing cathedral. It was different than a lot of the other cathedrals we'd seen so far, and I preferred it's architecture over some of the other ones. Unfortunately, once we got to this point in our walk, we had to head home so that Hannah could be back to the Centre in time to help prepare for dinner. We will finish this walk and you will get to hear of our adventures in Part 2 of the Bankside and Southwark post.

Crossing the Thames. Just a tad bit windy that day

Millennium Bridge

Inside the Southwark Catherdral

Soho to Trafalgar Square

Tara and I led this walk, each taking different sections of the walk to lead. Molly, Laura, Sydnie, and Sarah S. went along with us. It was a pretty interesting walk. It was one of the first walks in which we managed not to get lost, which made me and Tara quite happy. One of the first places we saw on our walk was the toy museum, which I thought was especially cute. We didn't go through the museum, but we stopped in the gift shop and had a good time looking at the different toys. We also passed by a little park that was super popular. It was sort of strange to see so many people so close together. I feel like normally people try to stay sort of far away from one another in public places like parks, but everyone was together and enjoying themselves. It was really cool to see that. There were a few strange parts of town that we had to walk through as well. Once we got closer and closer to Trafalgar square there were some pretty sketchy areas on this walk. But there was also a cute little street market that was just closing down as we passed through. I thought China Town was pretty interesting. It was similar to the China Town in San Fransisco, where I'm from, so I liked that little area of the walk. But my favorite part was by far the end of the walk. I had already been to Trafalgar square before this walk, but it is one of my favorite places in London. Once our walk was done, a few of us got some dinner and walked around the square, enjoying all the people.

St. Anne's Church

At the Toy Museum

Fleet Street and St. Paul's

I went on this walk with Tara, Alison, Kaylee, Nick, Hannah and Scott. Scott was our leader and I thought that he did a fabulous job leading. We didn't get lost at all. It took us quite a while to actually finish the walk because we made a few pit stops along the way, which I really liked. I felt like we were really making use of the walk rather than just doing it because it's an assignment or just to see the sites. We saw a ton of cool looking buildings on this walk. It always amazes me how there are thousand year old churches right next to 20 year old buildings. One of my favorite stops on our walk was this cute sweet shop. It was supposed to be like an old sweet shop and had all these big jars of candy along the wall. It smelt so good inside and we had fun choosing out different flavors of candy. I also liked this church we stopped at called St. Brideschurch. It was a smaller church but it was one of the churches designed by Sir Christopher Wren. It was so pretty inside and the pastor gave us a little history of the building and it's surroundings. He also let us go down into the crypt. It was so tiny compared to the crypt at St. Paul's. We ended our walk with an amazing view of St. Paul's.

At the Candy Shop

In front of St. Paul's

The City (East)

This was quite a walk. Hannah and I went together and we also led together. We had trouble basically the entire time. Because the tube has different lines closed down, we ended up starting sort of in the middle of the walk and then just ended at the same place we started so that we still saw everything but did it in a different order. We started at the Bank of London and got lost almost immediately. We wandered around for quite a while trying to find where we were but the map in the book didn't have the street names we were on labeled. We saw a lot of cool extra buildings so I really enjoyed our detour and eventually we were able to find where we were. I thought it was really interesting the variety of buildings all located in one place. There were so many different periods of architecture right next to each other. When we were looking at Lloyd's, which is very much a post-modern building, there was a way old church right there by it. I just thought it was crazy how it was all right there together. It was a way cool walk and we got to see some really great things, plus have a little adventure on the way.

Regent's Park

I went on the Regent's Park walk with Tara, Nick, Kaylee, Scott and Sam. We started our walk right after our Regent's Canal walk and it was a really enjoyable walk. It had some incredibly beautiful sights along the way and I enjoyed getting to see things that normal visitors to London probably wouldn't get the chance to see. The park was amazing. I love the little paddle boats and this great little alcove type thing we found along the way. There were a bunch of benches overlooking the lake and there were tree's surrounding the benches in the natural alcove. It was really peaceful and had a really great view. That was probably my favorite part of the walk.