Tower Bridge
Within walking distance from the Tower Hall Tube station, is the famous Tower Bridge. You will pass by a war memorial and Tower of London, which is an old castle. The structure seems so much like the old chinese palace with river and high walls around, etc.
When I shared my photos with friends and relatives, the moment they saw this picture, they shout "London Bridge". No no, this is the "Tower Bridge". People get to know London Bridge from the famous nursery rhyme and had the wrong perception that it is some fanciful bridge. The fact is, this Tower Bridge that was built later to help ease the traffic on London Bridge is so much nicer than the dull London Bridge.
This bridge serve both vehicles and pedestrians. Is was designed to open up to allow vessels to pass through along the River Thames. The contraction took 8 years before finally completed in 1894.
Today any vessel that need to pass through the bridge can make prior booking and if it meets the requirement, the lift is actually free of charge. Tourist can visit their website at (http://www.towerbridge.org.uk/TBE/EN/BridgeLiftTimes/) to check the bridge lift timing.
With an entrance fee of 8pounds, you get to go up the 2 towers and walk along the gallery on both sides where they display famous bridges in the world. You also gets to visit the engine room.
Ok, and here you go, this is the real London Bridge =)
St Paul's Cathedral
By the time we reached St Paul's, it was already about 4pm and there were not enough time for visiting. We took some pictures from outside and decided to com back another day.
Finally on the last day before our entire trip ends, we came back to St Paul's. (Entrance fee: 15pounds, http://www.stpauls.co.uk/). Audio guides are available in different languages and we stay inside for about less than 2 hours.
St Paul's is celebrating its 300th anniversary this year. It is a working church with services through the day at various timings. It is closed for visiting on Sundays. It has one of the largest Dome in the world, which comes in 3 layers, the outer layer we saw from the exterior of the building, the center portion which is a cone shape structure that supports between the outer and inner done and finally the inner dome with stain class pictures we saw from inside the Cathedral.
There are 3 levels in the Cathedral. The Cathedral Floor, The Crypt and The Galleries. We did not goes up to the Galleries because you got to manually climb up the stairs and our legs are tired from the past days of carrying our luggage around Paris metro stations. Haha.. Otherwise i think it will be a nice place to catch an overall view of the city around.
Trafalgar Square - National Gallery
This was not in our plan, but we passed by the National Gallery and decided to pay a visit since it was cold outside and admission is FREE. To add on to those, one of the famous sunflower painting from Van Gogh is being exhibit inside!
Trafalgar Square is also the site for Olympic Countdown.
London Eye
To me the highlight of London Day 1 will be the London Eye! Although i had been to the one in Singapore, but London Eye definitely has much much better view. I purposely checked the sunset timing and came around 30 mins before =)
We bought the tickets through our hotel, so it save us time to q for the tickets. (Fee: about 18 pounds)
London Eye is 135m (443ft) tall, standing above the south bank of the Thames. It is the world largest observation wheel with 32 capsules. The capsules are over in shape, unlike the one in Singapore is more like a long tube. There is one particular capsule in red, which the Queen once rode on. We did not managed to get on to that capsule anyway. It takes about 30 mins for us to go one round.
We had nice view of London City with nice sunset and my favorite Big Ben (The Parliament) house can be well seen from the top.
That is for Day 1 in London =)
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