London - Thanksgiving 2009 (day 2)

First thing the next morning, we figured out the Tube, and our Oyster cards that Jason and Shelly handed down to us from their visit in September (with credit still on them, thankyouverymuch!!)!  So we didn't realize you just have to hold the card up to the machine, it's not a swipe or anything... after we got that it was easier to figure out.  Also, kids ride free!  So that was a pleasant surprise!

The stop closest to our hotel was Kilburn Park on the Bakerloo line.  We found our way over to the Waterloo tube stop, which fortunately took no transfers since we had to make our Duck Tour by 10am. 

On the duck tour, they asked if we wanted the windows closed, but we're tough!  LOL

 

We got our first (and only I think) glimpse of No.10 Downing Street on this tour, this is where the Prime Minister resides. The tour guide was funny, but I'm afraid we didn't learn much, and the drive through London was very fast - it's so small, and many landmarks are right next to each other.  The result is "look over there - now over there, and we just passed..."  It's very fast, I think a walking tour would have been much more understandable.  At least we got the basic layout of the city on the tour.

Driving directly from the land into the water was a little crazy!  We had to switch drivers first, because the land driving and the boat piloting are two separate jobs!  This is honestly what we paid for... and it was worth it!  Very fun for all of us, we couldn't stop smiling!

It was neat to see Parliament and the rest of London from the water too - we did learn that people used the river to travel around London back before cars, it was quicker and cleaner than using the streets.

The picture above is MI-6!   Like where 007 reports to?  We went into and came out of the water just to the left of it.  I thought that was pretty cool.  :)

Next we headed over to the London Eye, since it's right next to the Duck Tour drop off.  We had purchased tickets in advance so we could avoid the ticket queue, thank goodness.  It was quite long.  Meridian and I were both nervous about being so high up in the air, with so little support, so we decided to just get it over with.  :)

Here comes our "pod" for our "flight"...

A word of advice here... we saw a private group get on before us, it was a "champagne flight" - that is the way to go.  You get the whole pod to your group, and we found it uncomfortable to ask strangers to get out of the way so we could see something too.  Friends and family however, we'd just push aside, ha!  I hope we'll do a private flight if we ever do it again, though since I spent so much of the time trying not to think about it, maybe I won't go again.  :)

Hungerford Bridge, from the Eye

Parliament and Big Ben from the Eye

 

OK, so this was a really long day... I'm going to split the blog here and continue with the second half when I get back to working on the blog.