Tuesday was our first full day in London to use the London Pass. We purchased the 3 day pass, which means we had to use it for a consecutive three days (no breaks.) We unfortunately got a late start. We took the Underground to near the Southwark Bridge, walked around, and made our way to our first stop at the Shakespeare’s Globe Theater after 11 AM, and they were no longer accepting walking tours. Okay, postponed to Wednesday. Sigh.
We checked out the Shard, and success!, we got tickets to our first use of the Pass, the View From the Shard. There are two viewing floors. While the first one on Level 69 is indoor and fully enclosed, you can walk up to the Level 72 Open Air Skydeck. I didn’t even know it was open air — it was so nice. We loved the sunlight coming through, and the fresh crisp air. We spent an hour up here.
We were pretty hungry, so we walked into the Southwark area, and ate tapas for lunch at Jose Tapas. We ate, we drank, we relaxed and took in the atmosphere. Oh, nice to relax.
We walked across the Tower Bridge, used our Pass again to get admission into the Tower Bridge itself to learn the history and walk above to look down below. You know, I always thought that the bridge with towers in London was the famous London Bridge. But no! London Bridge and Tower Bridge were two different bridges.
We moseyed over to the Tower of London, but we were too late (again) to get admission. So we had ice cream instead, checked out the gift shop. We tried to catch the next City Cruises boat ride, but we were (again!) late. We did hang around to catch the next and last cruise to Westminster Pier. It was a slow little boat ride east on the Thames river with a guide on a mic pointing out the visible sights.
It had been another long day of walking around, so we took a bus to visit the famous Hamleys store on Regent St. I think it was 6 or 7 floors of toys, so it was pretty cool. Josh and I were impressed with the huge Gen 1 Optimus Prime statue.
We weren’t up for a big dinner out, so we stopped by High Street in Kensington, and picked up some Japanese fast food from this place popular Wasabi chain restaurant. We grabbed a cab back to the hotel and ate back at our hotel.