Thames River Cruise, The Tower of London, The British Museum, and Westminster Abbey

Like I said in my previous post, our tickets for The Original London Sightseeing Tour included tickets for the Thames River Cruise.  I thought it was pretty cool and we took advantage of the river cruise to get back to the Tower of London, which we already passed on our way to the London Eye, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey.

Our guide was pretty funny and entertaining, so it made the cruise a lot better than I expected.

The boat had a retractable roof, which is super useful in a city that gets a lot of rain (at least, I am assuming that's why it's designed that way, heh).

This obelisk is called Cleopatra's Needle and is one of the oldest structures in London (that's what the guide said at least).  It was a gift from Egypt to commemorate the UK's victory in two battles around early 1800s.

The river cruise passed under a handful of bridges in a short amount of time.  London Bridge's history is notorious but it didn't look as interesting as some other bridges, like the Tower Bridge.

 

Some pretty cool sightings on our way to the Tower of London:

 

The Tate Modern houses tons of impressive modern art.  It was so packed when we visited that we didn't get to see much at all.  We're not big fans of modern art, so we didn't really mind. 

Finally, our destination, the Tower of London:

This building holds the crown jewels of British royalty.  I was dying to take pictures inside but there were some mean looking security guards that stopped me.  Boo.

This is the memorial in the courtyard of the palace that names those who lost their heads (a la Anne Boleyn, etc). 

Once we finished our self-guided tour of the tower, we hopped on the double-decker and headed to the British Museum for a quick look.  Check out how close our bus was to another in the street.  Crazy!

I am so sad that we didn't get to spend as much time as this place deserved, but that's our fault for wasting a whole day inside the hotel room because of jet lag :-P

We were exhausted at the end of the day and enjoyed our last stint on the tour bus before dinner.  Plus, it's always nice to enjoy the top of the bus alone.  Heh.

Piccadilly Circus:

The next day, we dropped by Westminster Abbey for a self-guided tour.  The church is so beautiful but it was packed with tourists, so a bit difficult to appreciate it in its full glory. 

London was such a blast and we cannot wait to go back one day.  We used to live/work in the NYC area and we felt "at home" being in a big city again.  Many friends told me that it's like the Big Apple and they were right.  There's definitely something to be said for the British flair and it's worth a visit!