Haltom City Travel

Archive for the ‘London’ Category

It had been a rainy summer and cold in northern Europe, but to my surprise, a warm sunny day and I received my arrival in London. After leaving my luggage in the wardrobe of the Train Station St. Pancras, took the subway to my tour at the Tower of London.

Due to the proximity of the London 2012 Olympic Games, there are a lot of construction work carried out at all times in different parts of London. That Sunday, two subway lines were completely closed, and two others were partially closed. However, all changes, closures, and connection options with other metro lines were adequately explained in the signs and loudspeakers in subway stations.

The Tower of London, my first sightseeing in London for the day, is on the north side of the River Thames near the famous Tower Bridge – in English: Tower Bridge -. To get to this tower, the nearest metro station is called Tower Hill and serves the metro lines named Circle and District.

Upon arrival, you have to go to the visitor center and purchase your ticket, or pick up a ticket if you have previously purchased via the Internet. Buy your ticket online will save you two pounds. Supposedly, buying online also allows you to skip the queue for the ticket and take a fast track to collect only your ticket. However, this was not what happened to my friend. She had bought his ticket online, but had to wait on the fast track because there were people who had no ticket and was buying at that time. In my case I had to go to the Pass Office and pick up the press pass to the Tower of London, the press staff had provided me kindly for my visit. Read the rest of this entry »

Take a tour of the city is probably one of the best ways to get a general direction and find their way into a city. Overall, I recommend doing the first day of his first visit to any city. In my case, however, was only my third visit I had the opportunity to make this walking tour of London.

All city tours are good for general guidance, but it depends on each one and has some trial and error, finding the kind of tour that we like. In my case, had taken a tour of the city of London on a bus that allows up and down all day at various stops, known as “hop-on hop-off” during my first visit to London. While this was very useful to see the different attractions and have a better idea of ​​what to visit in the next few days, I learned much about the attractions, because I could not retain most of the information provided by the audio guide on board bus. It was really hard to pay attention to the audio at all times!

With walking tours, on the contrary, my experience is that I find easier to remember what is said. Have one person talking face to face about the various monuments under way with them helps me to retain information and learn about different places. Moreover, these people are often hilarious as they are aware of the fact that tourists are given lots of information in a short time and tend to have therefore a very selective memory.

In any case, our journey began that day at 11 pm at the Wellington Arch, near the busy intersection known as Hyde Park Corner. On a visit to Wellington Arch you can take an elevator to the balcony and stand just below the bronze sculpture is at the top of the arc. As explained in the tour at London’s Duke of Wellington had a very exaggerated ego. After defeating Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo, and knowing that Napoleon had its own Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Wellington was built one for himself in London. The bow used to have the statue of Wellington on the top. However, Queen Victoria hated him and could always see from his window in the palace, so after the death of Wellington ordered the statue removed and replaced by the current. Read the rest of this entry »