London (1)

I went to London last weekend so let me do a brief recap of what happened.

Firstly, there is a need for me to split the trip into multiple posts as London is simply HUGE. Hmmm, it might be because I got used to the fact that Cambridge is so tiny, that all my distances actually shrank. Haha. Yupz, Keng Rui and I walked a grand total of roughly 35km over the 2 days that we were in London. So let me start first with things in a chronological order.

London is a really interesting place. It is a city in which old and new architecture are both present everywhere, and it is totally unlike Singapore in which everything is planned and laid out nicely. Some of the buildings are pretty interesting too, just like this egg-shaped building that first caught my eye when I got off the bus, but I have no idea which corporation owns it.

Anyway, I went to the Tower of London first. As the objective of this trip is more of an architecture walkabout, we decided not to enter any of the buildings as that will definitely take up time and cost us quite a fair bit. The Tower was formerly a fortress, royal palace and a prison (particularly for high status and royalty such as Queen Elizabeth I). Currently, it is a major tourist attraction and it houses the Crown Jewels.

The next major attraction is the Tower Bridge. I guess most of you are able to recognize it. Ha, oh, by the way, there is indeed a London bridge but it is simply a road bridge that has no special

spectacular architecture features. Hmm, I guess half the time people refer to the Tower Bridge as the London Bridge instead.

Oh we found St. Magnus the Martyr, a monument created by Sir Christopher Wren in memory of the Great Fire of London, which helped to put an end to the Black Death in England. It is quite an amazing piece of art.After that, I saw the Royal Exchange (the old exchange which I presumed to have housed the old capital exchange of London). It is quite majestic as well, and there was a statue of the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. Oh, I caught a glimpse of the Bank of England, which was right beside the Royal Exchange.

Royal Exchange(Right)

Bank of England(Left)

Ok, we walked on to St. Paul’s cathedral, and it was quite interesting as we saw a film crew filming stuff on our way there. I got this photo taken. Haha.