10.27.11
Posted in Travel Log (N. America & Europe) at 4:44 pm by Benjamin Ross
This is the 1st entry from my 2011 Europe Trip.
London! The economic capital of Europe, the gateway to the Western Hemisphere, the center of the Industrial Age’s most powerful empire. Fittingly, London seemed like the ideal starting point for my 18 day tour through Europe, although I was corrected several times by Brits that England is in fact not part of Europe by their definition. So here’s part 1 of a 14 part series on my recent trip through Europe…and the UK.
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| London is simply fabulous! At first I thought it was jitters from finally landing in Europe, but London is truly one of the most exciting cities on the planet. |
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| With the mix of new and old, of English and foreign, and of wealth and squalor, London just about has it all. |
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| In total, I visited 14 European cities, and when all was said and done, London takes the cake when it comes to architecture. Walking through the West End (the de facto city centre), you can feel the monetary spoils of the Industrial Revolution flowing through veins of the Victorian housing and commercial blocks. |
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| London is touristy, very touristy. But it’s one of those cities where most of the tourist attractions are well worth the visit, both old… |
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| …and new |
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| …and somewhat old |
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| …and royal. |
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| The changing of the guard is the big draw to Buckingham Palace, but after warnings of crowds so big I wouldn’t be able to see the changing, let alone the guard himself, I opted to view the guard in his unchanged state. |
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| London is one of those cities where you can wander around in any direction and inevitably run into something majestic, old, and famous without ever even knowing it was there. The entire city is overflowing with history, and after checking 6 or 7 monuments off my travel notes, I gave up trying to figure out what was what. |
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| Possibly the most famous tourist attraction in town is the Tower of London. |
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| With a slew of museums and neighborhoods I wanted to see, I didn’t end up going inside. |
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| The view is indeed quite nice from outside though. |
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| Here’s Trafalgar Square, another major West End landmark. |
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| Compared with its West End environs, there isn’t anything extraordinary about Trafalgar Square at first glance. But something about this square just works. |
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| I can’t put a finger on it exactly, but the more I passed through Trafalgar, the more I wanted to take a break, relax, eat one of those pre-packaged plastic triangle sandwiches, hacky sack, people watch, or a combination of the above. |
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| It also helped that it was 70 degrees and sunny for the full two days I was in London. Apparently, this never happens. |
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| London is the host of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. But if not for this sign in Trafalgar Square, I would have never even noticed. This was quite the contrast to China in the years leading up to 2008. You couldn’t go anywhere in Beijing (let alone the entire country) without overhearing the Beijing 2008 brew-haha. |
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| St. Paul’s Cathedral is another one of Central London’s masterpieces of architecture. |
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| The front steps of St. Paul’s is another classic London public space. At mid-day, it was full of office workers on lunch break and tourists snapping photos. |
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| …and a view of St. Paul’s from the side |
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| …and a view across the street from St. Paul’s. Central London is one of those places where every building looks different, yet somehow matches perfectly within the architectural theme. |
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| Moving outward now…London has one of the world’s most efficient public transit systems, and getting almost anywhere is cake. London was also a pioneer in public transportation branding. It’s “roundel” is one of the most widely-recognized symbols in the world, and its system map, using color-coded lines and a non-geographic layout has become the template for public transit maps across the world. |
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| The backbone of the system is the London Underground, or as it’s colloquially called “The Tube.” With the first line opening in 1863, the Tube is the oldest underground railroad in the world. |
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| In addition to the Tube, London has several lines of elevated mass transit, appropriately dubbed “The London Overground.” |
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| And the newest addition to London’s mass transit network is the Docklands Light Rail (DLR), covering the vast Dockland’s district (more on that below), formerly not connected to the public transit grid. All 3 systems (Underground, Overground, and DLR) work in conjunction with one another with free transfers from system to system. |
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| London also has a dense network of buses with many of them running in dedicated bus lanes. As a response to growing congestion, London became one of the first major cities to introduce “congestion charges” in 2003. Private vehicles wishing to enter Central London between 7 am and 6 pm Monday through Friday are charged a 10 Pound congestion charge for each entrance, easing congestion for bus transit. |
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| A web of commuter rail also surrounds London providing convenient transport from surrounding suburbs and towns to the city centre. |
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| Attempting to navigate London with a map is a hopeless exercise in futility. Even with a compass in hand, the simple act figuring out which direction you are headed is enough to make the head spin. But London does have some of the most informative public signage I’ve ever encountered. Unfortunately I didn’t snap a picture, but street signs are flanked with arrows pointing in every direction to landmarks, districts, and virtually anything else a tourist would want to locate. Just follow the signage, and you can find just about anything, even without a map. London’s hyper-informative signage even extends to casual reminders of which direction the traffic flows. |
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| can’t remember the last time I used one of these |
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| Or how about this “authentic Canadian-style” sports bar and grill. |
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| more random architecture shots from the West End |
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| rush hour |
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| The city area of London is bisected by the Thames River. Most of the river crossings are underwhelming, except for the illustrious Tower Bridge, constructed between 1886 and 1894 |
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| In addition to the bridge itself, crossing it on foot allows for some of the most scenic views of London skyline. |
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| Much of London’s modern architecture is located along the bank south of the river. |
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| With street grids and traffic patterns laid out long before the advent of steel, London has few skyscrapers compared with other world financial centers such as New York and Tokyo. But a sizable chunk of the more recent office development, especially those areas just south of the Thames, seems to be employing the high-rise paradigm. |
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| Here’s another shot of the Tower Bridge, looking north from the south bank of the river. |
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| …and a final view of the bridge from the South |
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| With my first day in London devoted primarily to exploring the more posh districts in the West End and just south of the river, I spent my second day exploring several of London’s ethnic as well as outerlying neighborhoods. The first was Brick Lane, London’s Little Bangladesh. |
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| Brick Lane was more disneyfied than I had expected, but still housed several streets worth of South Asian shops and eateries. |
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| … |
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| London is also home to a sizable Chinatown. For a city its size, London’s Chinatown was mostly a disappointment. It’s highly disneyfied and has all the characteristics of a downtown tourist trap. With most of the restaurants and businesses catering to a non-Chinese clientele, I was led to believe that there are probably additional satellite Chinatown in the London metro area, with “Chinatown” now functioning primarily as an economic rather than residential district. Anybody have any more info on this? |
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| One pleasant surprise of Chinatown was this delicious Lanzhou “pulled noodles” restaurant I found. You can hardly walk 10 minutes in any Chinese city without bumping into one of them, but in North American Chinatowns they can be surprisingly elusive. |
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| Like most disneyfied Chinatowns, the conspicuous symbols of Chinese culture are everywhere in London’s Chinatown. By my count, the red-lanterns-per-Chinese-resident ratio was hovering somewhere around 1:1. |
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| The Chinese characters in this sign read “Old Hunan Village, Hunan Food.” Gotta love deceptive advertising. |
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| Moving on to the East End, which has traditionally been home to London’s working class masses. |
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| Famously the origin of London’s Cockney population, the East End is now inhabited in large part by immigrants from across the globe. Pictured here is the Middle Eastern market in Whitechapel. |
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| In all my travels, the Whitechapel market is the only shopping district I have encountered where buqas and lingerie can be purchased from adjoining stalls. |
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| And here’s the Spitalfields Market, one of the more gentrified parts of East London. |
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| These next few pics are from the neighborhood of Hackney. Hackney was originally an independent town just down the road from London, but with urban expansion in the 19th Century, it was swallowed up into the greater metropolis. Hackney is also one of the few spots in the East End where I heard mutterings of Cockney still being spoken. |
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| Old Hackney flats like these provided housing to the vast pool of human labor which flocked to the East End during the Industrial Revolution. |
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| more flats |
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| a small creek running through Hackney |
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| recreational boats |
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| more boats |
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| Now shifting to the Docklands. Located in East London, along the Thames, the Docklands were once home to the largest port in the world. It was mainly from this port that raw materials from across the British Empire were shipped in, and manufactured goods were transported around the world. |
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| As England deindustrialized, the port shrunk, until finally by 1980 all of the docks had been closed. The 8 square mile swath of land lay derelict as crime and poverty set in. As soon as the docks were closed, redevelopment plans were begun, which have turned the Docklands into a thriving high-rise financial, commercial, and residential district. |
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| As you can see, very little physical remnants of the district’s past remain. |
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| I should also mention, there is a free Docklands Museum housed in an old warehouse along the river, which was the most interesting museum I visited in London. So much of London’s history revolved around the history of the docks, and the museum does an excellent job of putting it in perspective, as well as documenting the changes in the Docklands occurring in present times. |
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| Another major recent development has been the Docklands Light Rail (pictured about 50 slides up). Previously, the Docklands had been entirely cut off from the London Underground, but when the DLR first opened in 1987, the Docklands became conveniently linked to the rest of the city’s transit grid. |
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| London is a magnificent array of lighting arrangements at night. One regret I have from my visit is that I didn’t spend more time bumbling around at night and taking pictures. This one is from Piccadilly Circus, London’s Times Square of sorts. |
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| Victoria Station, one of London’s many commuter transit terminals. |
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| glitzy shopping |
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| Big Ben |
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| up close |
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| The London Eye |
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| Westminster Abbey |
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| …and a couple more random night shots from the West End |
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| London is one of those destinations which receives an ungodly amount of hype on the travel circuit. And it’s one of those unique places where the plethora of hype is well-justified. Due to the time constraints of my trip, I only budgeted 2 days to explore this city of endless intrigue and excitement. But even 2 weeks probably wouldn’t have been enough to take in all London has to offer. With 18 days and 4 countries on the itinerary, I had a schedule to keep, so the rest of London will have to wait for another trip. Next stop: Cardiff, Wales. |
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Santa Fe Abogado
said,
December 19, 2011 at 1:34 pm
London is great, there are a lot of tourist attractions to see, you need a couple of days to see it properly but it is worth it.
Kevin
said,
January 19, 2012 at 2:07 am
London’s “additional satellite Chinatown” is in Colindale, North London (there used to be an amazing shopping mall there called Oriental City, but I heard it got knocked down a few years ago)
Grandpa and Grandma said,
February 4, 2012 at 5:28 pm
Great set of photos and you did a tremendous amount in only two days. The East End docks were a favorite target of the Nazis during World War II and I imagine the destruction at that time contributed to the eventual disappearance of all the docks.