When we bought our tickets to ride on the London Eye, we got combo tickets that also included a boat tour on the exotic Thames River, as floating up and down the Thames sounded like a fun thing to do and would give us a quick overview of the parts of the city around the river. The tour route started at a dock in front of the London Eye itself and passed downstream through central London, all the way to a point past Tower Bridge, where it made a U-turn and retraced back to its starting point.

Between our London Eye adventure and our boat tour, we'd crossed the river to visit Westminster Abbey, leaving us at the wrong end of Westminster Bridge as our tour time approached. But our tour time wasn't really approaching that quickly, so we actually had plenty of time to re-cross the bridge and even to grab a quick fish-and-chips lunch at the County Hall on the way to the dock.

The dock was reached by way of a walkway just past the London Eye.

We boarded the boat and found seats, which were open to the elements. We were blessed with good weather – I'm not sure whether they cancel tours when it's rainy, or if everybody just gets wet. The boat pulled away from the dock, and we were surprised when it started heading upstream instead of downstream. We passed under Westminster Bridge and found ourselves with an excellent view of the Houses of Parliament, which we figured to be the point of our short trip upstream.

After getting just past the Houses, we reversed course and headed back toward Westminster Bridge, which we again passed underneath on our way downstream and toward the main body of the tour. On the way, we passed the London Eye, where tourists were undoubtedly looking down at us as specks on the water.

We passed under the Golden Jubilee Bridges we'd been looking down at when we'd ridden the London Eye a couple of hours earlier and came to a place where the river curved to the right, becoming a west-to-east river again, a direction it would maintain (more or less) for the rest of its way to the North Sea. On the left bank of this bend in the river we noticed something that looked like an Egyptian obelisk.

This was indeed an Egyptian obelisk, a gift from Muhammad Ali. Not the boxer – as far as I know, he never owned any Egyptian obelisks – but the Ottoman governor of Egypt and the Sudan, who presented the obelisk to Britain in 1819 in commemoration of Britain's defense of Egypt from French forces in the Battle of the Nile (1798) and the Battle of Alexandria (1801).

The obelisk has come to be known as Cleopatra's Needle, but it never really had much to do with Cleopatra. It was first erected in Heliopolis (a bit to the northeast of present-day Cairo) by Thutmose III around 1450 BC, more than a thousand years before Cleopatra was born, and was moved by the Romans to Alexandria in 12 BC, 18 years after her death. The Romans set the obelisk up by a temple that had been built by Cleopatra during her reign, this being the obelisk's only connection with the famous queen.

Ali included one condition with his gift: the Brits would have to come and get it. Sometime after the obelisk had been set up by the Romans, it had fallen over and partially buried itself, where it stayed, protected from the elements, for many centuries. The obelisk is 69 feet tall and weighs 224 tons, and the British, while grateful for Ali's gesture, knew an expensive recovery and transportation headache when they saw one, and postponed picking it up until 1877. At this time a wealthy anatomist named Sir William James Erasmus Wilson took it upon himself to bring the obelisk to Britain, and applied money and the finest in 19th Century engineering to the problem.

But a storm in the Bay of Biscay cared nothing for Wilson's plans, and six crew members died and the obelisk was nearly lost as a result. After a tense delay and more money, the Needle was eventually manhandled the rest of the way to London, and it was finally set up in its present location in 1878.

We passed under another bridge, called Waterloo Bridge, and eventually in the distance we could see the iconic dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. St. Paul's is visible from a considerable distance, as it's 365 feet tall (it was the tallest building in London until 1967). It was designed by Sir Christopher Wren in the late 17th Century and was completed in 1711. There is a lot of history in the building, some of which will be explored in a future web page.

London is full of old buildings, many of which are not particularly iconic but remain interesting nevertheless. Here's one between Waterloo Bridge and the next bridge:

The next bridge is actually two bridges, with the remains of a third between them. The two bridges are Blackfriars Bridge and Blackfriars Railway Bridge. There used to be another Blackfriars Railway Bridge, but it eventually became too weak to support modern trains and was demolished in 1985. However, some of the support columns for the old bridge remain, painted red.

Beyond Blackfriars Bridge on the right bank is a building called Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. This is a reconstruction of the original Globe Theatre, in which William Shakespeare's theater company frequently performed, and where many of his plays had their debuts. But the original Globe was not in this location – the theater itself is long gone, but part of its foundation was discovered in 1989, and it's about 750 feet downstream from the reconstruction.

Near the site of the original Globe there is a pub called The Anchor, and a succession of pubs on this site were frequented by many famous Brits over the centuries (our tour guide mentioned Shakespeare, Pepys and Dickens, and if you add their friends and acquaintances, there were no doubt many others). In the distance beyond The Anchor is a building visible from an even greater distance than St. Paul's. This is The Shard, at 1,016 feet the tallest building in the United Kingdom. The building was completed in 2012 and has many tenants – offices, restaurants, apartments and a hotel, among others. And it has the highest observation deck in the UK on its 72nd floor, 801 feet above the ground.

Beyond The Anchor and sandwiched between two nondescript brown buildings is a full-sized replica of Sir Francis Drake's ship, The Golden Hind, on which he sailed around the world between 1577 and 1580, wreaking extremely lucrative havoc on Spanish shipping (at the behest of Elizabeth I) along the way. And shortly after The Golden Hind, we passed under another bridge which didn't appear to be all that interesting. But this was London Bridge, and while the present London Bridge just opened in 1973, there have been several London Bridges on this spot, going back to Roman times. For centuries, London Bridge was the only way to cross the Thames in London, other than by boat. The London Bridge preceding the current one is now in Arizona, where it crosses a portion of Lake Havasu, famous for Spring Break hedonism.

On emerging from underneath London Bridge, we could see the next bridge downriver, the much more interesting-looking Tower Bridge. As we got nearer to Tower Bridge, we could see a modern beehive-looking building on the right bank that turned out to be the London City Hall. This building was completed in 2002 and is the headquarters of the Greater London Authority, which is the governance body of Greater London (not to be confused with the City of London, which is the non-borough "borough" of London's origins and which has its own headquarters; see the introductory London page for an attempt at explaining all this).

On the left bank, directly across the river from the City Hall, is the fabled Tower of London, which is emphatically not modern. It's not really a tower, but a royal palace complex (surrounded by two walls and a moat) which encompasses several towers, among other structures. The name comes from its original central structure, a building now called the White Tower, which was built in 1078 by William the Conqueror. A number of expansions were implemented over the next couple of centuries, but by 1285 the complex had reached the approximate layout which has been maintained ever since. Besides a royal residence, the Tower has been an armoury, a treasury, a menagerie, a prison and a place of execution. A gate along the Thames which allows for entry to the Tower by water was initially used as a convenience by the royal family, but came to be used as an entry point for many of the Tower's prisoners, acquiring the name "Traitors' Gate".

But despite the Tower's notorious reputation, very few prisoners have actually been executed within the walls of the Tower – executions were generally performed at nearby Tower Hill, in public. The list of these prisoners is very long, but among the most well-known are William Wallace, Sir Thomas More, Guy Fawkes and Sir Walter Raleigh. Only seven prisoners were executed inside the Tower prior to the 20th Century (12 more were executed for espionage during the First and Second World Wars). The seven were executed within the walls because it was felt the executions were largely unpopular and could lead to unmanageable situations if performed in public. Five of the seven were women, including Henry VIII wives Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.

Today the Tower is a popular tourist attraction. Visitors are welcomed and taken on group tours by members of the Yeoman Warders, who have many stories to tell. The Yeoman Warders, of whom there are currently 37, are all retired officers of the armed forces who actually live at the Tower with their families. They also have many additional duties besides conducting tourists around the grounds.

Of the many structures within the Tower complex, one is of special interest for many visitors. This is the Jewel House, which is the home of the Crown Jewels. There is much to see here, but photography is not allowed. And of course security is extremely tight.

Directing our attention back to the river at this point, we found Tower Bridge to be looming very close. Tower Bridge is the bridge many people mistakenly think of when they hear "London Bridge". Tower Bridge is much more impressive to look at, with two 213-foot Gothic-styled towers that have two levels of traffic between them. The top level is for pedestrians only, and there are two passageways. The lower level is for both pedestrian and vehicular traffic, and folds up to allow tall boats to pass through. Despite the bridge's centuries-old appearance, it was only completed in 1894. Its central span is 200 feet wide, and each of the two side-spans is 270 feet long, and is a suspension bridge. The upper-level pedestrian walkways are 143 feet above the river, which is the limiting height for boats heading upstream at this point. When the drawbridge is closed, the limiting height is 28 feet. This was not a problem for our tour boat.

Shortly after passing under Tower Bridge, we had reached the end of our tour route, so the boat turned around to begin the journey back to our starting point.

Heading back, we passed under all the same bridges we'd passed under earlier and saw much the same scenery. But we saw it all from a different angle, and noticed some things we'd missed on the way out. One thing that seemed more obvious from the new angle was the grouping of new architecture with old architecture.


There were also a couple of bridges I didn't mention the first time we encountered them. The first, upstream from London Bridge, was Southwark Bridge, which was completed in 1921. At that time it replaced a previous bridge, which dated back to 1819.

After Southwark Bridge, there was a footbridge called the Millennium Bridge. It was completed in 2000 (hence the name) but was found to be unstable, earning the nickname "Wobbly Bridge". It was closed almost immediately and stayed that way for two years, while technology was thrown at it. It reopened in February of 2002, with its funky motion eliminated. Its south end is close to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern Art Gallery, and its north end isn't far from St. Paul's Cathedral, making it a popular bridge with pedestrians.

We eventually reached the Golden Jubilee Bridges, and finally our starting point, the London Eye.


At this point, you may be thinking that we'd already done plenty for our first day after crossing a continent and an ocean. But we're nothing if not ambitious, and we had one more thing we wanted to do: a visit to the National Portrait Gallery.