July 21 – A Royal Tour

Today we were met at the hotel with our guide for the day, Gordon.  He is a “green badge” London Taxi driver.  To get this badge requires that the candidate complete “the Knowledge”.  They have to memorize something like 320 routes, 25,000 streets and 20,000 landmarks within a six mile radius of Charing Cross.  This usually 2 to 4 years of study. 

Gordon is also a “Blue Badge” Tourist Guide.  This requires 18 months to two years of training and is the highest tourist guide qualification in the UK.   and he has lived in London all of his life and knows it well.  He was so much fun…witty, cynical, knowledgeable, philosophical, and wonderfully talkative.  And he interacted wonderfully with Liam.  We all thoroughly enjoyed the day with him.

One of the things about the tour that was so interesting is the experiences we had with the taxi itself.  The London taxis have an extremely tight turning radius of 25 feet.  There appears to also be lots of parking spaces set aside for taxis (although maybe Gordon was just lucky in finding spots to park).  At our first stop he parked right in the middle of the street.  Some of the wider streets have a stretch right down the middle that is marked off for parking.  How convenient.

Gordon's Taxi parked in the middle of the street

Our first stop was Kensington Palace (Gordon’s least favorite palace as he thinks it looks like an apartment building – and it does). 

Then we swung by Hyde Park and walked down to the Princess Diana Memorial.  We could see it through the fence but it was closed and the water was shut off in it.  We also walked a bit along the Serpentine, a small, long skinny lake.

From there we headed off to see the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace.  Gordon dropped us off just opposite St. James Palace where we walked down to the Friary Court at the palace.  There we saw the contingent of the Foot Guard getting ready to march to Buckingham Palace.  There were mounted police there to escort the guard.

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Video of changing of guards - foot guards
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The guard marched out shortly after we arrived.  We followed them down The Mall (lined with spectators) to Buckingham Palace...

where we saw some of the Horse Guard leaving. 

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Video of Horse Guard
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We were late to arrive there so we couldn’t get close to the fences around Buckingham Palace to see the actually changing ceremonies.  We did wait until the marching band arrived from the opposite direction and entered the palace ground. 

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Video of marching band
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Then we walked back to St. James Palace where Gordon was waiting for us.  He gave us info on St. James Palace (King Charles I stayed here the night before his execution).  He also pointed out a several shops with Royal Warrants.  Lobb makes custom boots and shoes,

Lock and Company makes hats (has made hats for royalty and James Bond movies) and

Berry Brothers carries expensive wines.

We drove by the American Embassy – very unusual architecture.

Gordon pointed out a nearby swimming pool suspended high above the streets and connecting two buildings.  It is for a hotel.

We stopped at Lambeth Palace, a Tudor period palace and now the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Just across the road from Lambeth we had good views of the Westminster Abbey across the Thames. 

He also stopped at the Imperial War Museum for a very quick walk through. This one would be worth going back for a longer visit.

We stopped at Borough Market for lunch and had good views of the Shard. 

About 2:00 he dropped us off near the Tower of London where we had skip-the-line- tickets.  We spent almost two hours there.  Liam was interested in walking along the palace walls. 

And we also saw the crown jewels (no photos allowed).  There were also views of the Tower Bridge.

After visiting the Tower we reconnected with Gordon and our next stop was an old Roman and Medieval Wall that is still standing. 

Photos of random sights that we saw as we traveled around London.

The Walkie-Talkie

We were back at the hotel just before dinner time.  We had a really awesome day with Gordon.  We got his card so we can arrange another tour with him the next time we are in London.