Visited: Sept 27, 2018
A longtime friend of mine Ryan Anthony visited from Canada for 5 days. He did some solo adventures but we did some stuff fun stuff together too. Here's a quick recount of what we got up to.
Day 1 - Sept 27, 2018
Ryan arrived Thursday noonish in London and successfully navigated his way from Heathrow to my flat in Chelsea despite the strike on the Piccadilly line.
Whenever I have a friend in town I always like to start them with a walking tour. Today that was the plan with a slight variation of getting into the SkyGarden first. The SkyGarden is an actual large open air garden atop the building at 20 Fenchurch Street affectionally know at the 'Walkie-Talkie' due to its distinctive shape.
Does it look like a Walkie-Talkie? I don't know but Londoners do like to nickname their buildings including also the Gherken called such because it's shaped like a pickle and The Cheese Grater, named that way.. well because.. you know.
We arrived a bit early and grabbed a coffee. Ryan was working on almost no sleep to it was a good pick me up for him. Our arrival time of 3:45pm meant we could get some good afternoon sunny and it was a really sunny day!
Below: Lovely views from SkyGarden, inside and out!
After SkyGarden we started the walking tour. I don't have a set path but generally I try to get people by the following sites:
Tower of London, Tower Bridge - skipped as Ryan is going on his on on Friday
Walking down from 20 Fenchurch towards the Thames we pass The Monument - monument to the Great Fire of London of 1666
In this case across London Bridge and a quick visit into Southwark Cathedral
Borough Market & Golden Hinde - Francis Drake's Ship
Southbank past Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern (plus that view of St. Paul's across the Millennium Bridge
Past the Mondrian and the National Theatre
Into tourist hell (aka past the London Eye and London Aquarium)
Further tourist hell (aka Westminster Bridge, Palace and Abbey)
From there it's back up Whitehall with a quick peak at 10 Downing - but from a distance you can't go near it.
Next is entry into Trafalgar Square where you can see the National Gallery, Canada House and the lovely monument to Admiral Nelson who died leading the battle of Trafalgar - Nelson's Column
From Trafalgar Square it's a short walk up to Piccadilly Circus - similar to Times Square in New York, but smaller and more European
From there a walk over to Leicester Square to see the heart of the theatre district
After Leicester Square we grabbed some dinner at a pub near Aldwych.
We then walked along The Strand to the boarder of The City followed by a walk back through The Mall, a Buckingham Palace viewing and finally through St James Park to St James Park Station.
Below: Clockwise from top left - Borough Market, London Eye, The Aquarium, Buckingham Palace at night, Trafalgar Square / National Gallery, Aquarium and London Eye
Day 2 - Ryan's own adventure
Day 2 unfortunately I had to work so Ryan ventured off on his own to check out more of London. First he headed over to the Tower of London and did a couple hours there before meeting his friend for lunch. After lunch he went to Primrose Hill and ended up doing a bike ride through Hyde Park down past The Royal Albert Hall and finally as far south as Cheyne Row. After he got back we grabbed dinner and some beers and hit the local pub The Bolton for a night cap and some board games.
Day 3 - Football!
To prep for our football adventure we have been watching The Real Football Factories, a show about British football hooliganism, especially that of the 80's and 90's. We left around 11am for Olympic Stadium taking the district line then the central line to Stratford. West Ham United FC plays at London Olympic Stadium and has since 2016. It was a tough battle to get into the stadium with London rivals Tottenham Hotspur FC also bidding for the the spot. Eventually West Ham got the stadium and Tottenham is currently playing at Wembley.
West Ham United FC has a long history - which I won't get into because I could write a few pages on it. Wikipedia has a good summary here. The quick version however is they started out as the Thames Ironworkers FC and even though they changed their named to West Ham in 1900, they still retain some original links to the first name, being nicknamed still the Irons or Hammers. While the team has never finished first in the top division they have won the FA Cup 3 times and the Euro Cup Winners Cup. Their top finish in the top division is 3rd but they've been in the top division for most of the last 60 years. Their main anthem is the bubble song, which always makes me wonder how the Irons sing about bubbles, but it's a long time tradition dating back almost 100 years, so I guess they are sticking with it!
But now on to the game!
We got to the game just after kickoff and sat quite high around 5 row from the top. The view was great you could really see the flow of the game develop, you just couldn't see some finer details. The lads around us, especially one group in front of us had some rowdy moments and cursed from time to time (by that I mean all the time!).
Below: Outside the stadium, view of the field and one of the West Ham goals.
The game started quickly with West Ham scoring only 5 minutes into the first half which sent the crowd wild. It didn't take long either for the West Ham fans to start heckling the visitor fans who were sitting a few sections over from us. West Ham scored again before the half was over and the crowd loved it.
The second half was just as rowdy with more singing and jeering the Man U fans. Man U did score to make it 2-1 with 20 minutes left but West Ham scored 3 minutes later and the game ended 3-1!
Greenwich
Post game we headed down to Greenwich via the DLR to see the park, Cutty Sark and the Royal Observatory. I had seen the area before so we mostly strolled around the park, the observatory and then into Greenwich high street to watch the Chelsea / Liverpool match. Liverpool salvaged a draw with a last minute brilliant goal by Sturridge.
We also managed to sneak in some fish and chips!
Below clockwise from top left: Greenwich Market, Royal Observatory, Cutty Sark, More Market, View from the park and tasty Fish and Chips!
After the walk around Greenwich we headed for the Thames Clipper which took us back to Westminster. I had previously taken boats from Tower Bridge to Westminster and Westminster to Richmond, so this was the first time I'd gone from as far east as Greenwich.
The boat itself is quite fast and was traveling at a fast clip from Greenwich to Tower Bridge (with a few stops along the way). We took the boat all the way to Westminster, got off and then walked around the area eventually getting on a bus a little bit past Westminster Abbey.
Day 4 - Dover
I had been to Dover before (see post), but we were looking for a day trip and had to rule out a couple options. Notably 1) Driving - too much of a hassle to get a car and go driving, plus it seemed overpriced, 2) Salisbury - typical poor train options, 3) Bus trip to Oxford, Bath, Stonehenge, or 4) Dover - which we opted for.
The train ride down was smooth as usually except they had closed the part of the line between Canterbury East and Dover so we had to get off the train there and take a bus (pretty much a typical double decker).
We arrived around 11AM and headed almost immediately for the Castle. The Castle itself is beautiful and in amazing condition. It sits atop the cliffs of Dover very near the valley where most of the city itself lies. You can see why they chose this spot it's very imposing.
We climbed the hill and got in around 11:15. Dover Castle has been used for many things. It was the site of forts well before William I took it over as a site for one of his first castles. It was fortified to almost its current shape by Henry II. It was used during both the Napoleonic and World Wars along with the surrounding cliffs as a major defensive post to protect England from invasion via the channel. In fact many bunkers and tunnels have been dug in the cliffs as part of that defense.
One such set of bunkers was our first stop as we entered in the tunnels for a recounting of the Rescue from Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo. It was a great interactive tale of Dunkirk that took us through the lead up to WWII all the way through to the rescue.
We then passed over another similar hospital story and went around the castle grounds. We did stop at a few spots before we got to the castle itself including the WW1 artillery bunker and gun (which they were supposed to fire but didn't).
Below: Vic Station, The bus to Dover, Dover Square, Inside the tunnels and the view from Dover Castle
We then wandered around to the medieval tunnels, and into the tower finally which has a bunch of grand rooms and lovely views from the top. The tower itself was where the monarch and their entourage would stay.
Last stop in the castle was the Roman Lighthouse and the Saxon Church both perched on the second highest point in the castle. The lighthouse is the oldest part of the castle dating to not surprisingly the Roman era, and the Saxon Church also has stood on the site in some form longer than the rest of most of the castle.
Post castle we had some late lunch at a local pub and caught the bus then train back to London. Before we headed home we stopped off at King's Cross and St Pancras for some shopping and photo ops then headed home. Ryan went back out for a bit for some sports at a pub and I crashed early being quite tired!
Last stop!
St Pancras....
Day 5/6 - Summary
Monday and Tuesday I had to work but Ryan ventured out to see more of London including St Paul's in lieu of Westminster Abbey (good call in my view), Abbey Road, Soho and do some shopping. We did head out to watch some baseball Monday night at a semi-local pub called the Famous Three Kings (which 3 they are we may never know).
Great visit and too short as always!
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