London Day 3 - Self Guided Walking Tour Continued
We had a later-than-usual start to our wandering today because the Warriors were playing the Sharks at 8:30am. That's rugby league for the uninitiated. I was keen to see how they went. Spoiler alert: they won easily. It was after 10:30am when we left the flat and started our walk to the station. We were on the Central Line today, which is faster, underground, and has older train carriages. Oh—and it's very warm inside. 🥵
We began our self-guided walking tour at St Paul’s Cathedral, which costs £25 to see inside on a tour. Hmmm, no thanks—our budget doesn't stretch that far. We enjoyed seeing the size of the place from the outside and hearing the clock chime 12 times at midday.
From there, we headed down to the Thames and crossed the Millennium pedestrian bridge, which had great views up and down the river. On the other side is the Tate Modern Gallery, which is free to visit—and we would have done so if the line hadn’t been quite so long.
Next, we walked alongside the river toward Tower Bridge. Along the way, we came across an unexpected bonus sight: the HMS Belfast, an old navy frigate permanently moored beside the walkway. Nearby were a few food trucks, and since it was almost 1pm, we grabbed some hot chips and a Coke Zero—£5 for the chips and £2.50 for the Coke.
We spotted a small table with two spare chairs nearby and asked the others sitting there if they minded sharing. They were more than happy to, and the older lady, who was American, said she’d love for us to sit there so she could listen to our accents. She and her husband are from Utah, and their children and grandchildren live in Tennessee. We said we were from New Zealand and talked about how many hours it took to fly to England.
We were getting along great—until she said she just loved “Crocodile Dundee”! 😂 At that point, I (politely but wrongly) explained that saying that was like calling her Canadian. She thought that was okay. Of course, it’s the other way around—but best I didn’t tell her that. We all had a good laugh, then said our farewells.
We continued our walk to Tower Bridge and then crossed back to the side we started on. The Tower of London is right next door, so we walked past and took a few photos from the outside. That’s where the Crown Jewels are kept, and you'd probably need to sell some to afford the £35 entry ticket! I’m guessing the prices for many of these attractions are sky-high just to keep the numbers down. It would need to be a very special place for us to pay that much.
Our next stop was the Monument to the Great Fire of London, which was only £6 to visit. We would have gladly paid that if it hadn’t been closed! My tour director (aka Sarah) hadn’t realised that today was the one day it was shut. Oh well—never mind.
On we continued to see a statue of James Greathead, a relation of some kind to Sarah’s grandfather Aston, Suzanne’s father. It’s an impressive statue surrounded by even more impressive buildings, so it was well worth the visit. He was a city engineer involved in constructing the London Underground tunnels.
After that stop, we considered completing a full loop back to St Paul’s, but instead headed to Liverpool Street Station. Finally, we’re ticking off a few Monopoly board properties! 😉 The main reason we wanted to check out this station is that it’s where we’ll catch our train to Stansted Airport next week. I like to be as prepared as possible when it comes to travel, and since this station is so large, it was good to see where the Stansted line platforms were accessed from.
We had planned to take the Elizabeth Line home, because it’s above ground and more comfortable, but for some unknown reason, it would have required a mid-trip train change today. So, we opted for the easier, direct—but less pleasant—Central Line again.
Back at the flat, I checked the Strava logs, which told me we had walked 11km today. Sarah thought it felt less than yesterday. We’ll see if she’s still thinking that when she tries to get out of her comfy lounge chair. 😂 We carried our jackets most of today, only needing them at the start due to the temperature not the rain. But no sooner had we got inside and made coffee and it started to rain quite hard. Great timing! 👍
No visit to the pub tonight. ☹️ We are having a break and will reconvene tomorrow. For dinner tonight we are eating in for the first time. More of that to come to make our dollars go further. We walked to the Co-op store and purchased a heat and eat cottage pie, a garlic bread, and a pre-prepared green salad. Plus more milk and a bottle of coke zero. Total cost £9.65. If it looks edible there will be a photo below. If not we will leave things to your imagination. We had to start the gas oven for the first time, not just the hobs, and there was a moment whereby we might have blown ourselves up but got it sorted in the end. 🤞
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