We came, we saw, we hopped back on

The thing about a hop-on-hop-off bus is that you usually know exactly what you’re signing up for.  You’ll typically get a pair of really crummy earbuds that won’t stay in your ears.  You’ll have to plug those into a thingamajig right in front of your seat, and it is almost always set to the English language.  It certainly was today.  We bought tickets and hopped on, getting a little background information while we traveled from the London Eye to the Tower Bridge.  That’s where we hopped off for a look at a very fancy bridge.  We got tickets for our self-guided bridge tour, walking up one tower, across a pedestrian part at the top and into the other tower.  It was a very cool bridge, and there was certainly a lot to learn about how it was constructed.  They had displays about the men who had to dive down in the river wearing elaborate gear to build the foundational parts of the bridge before the actual towers went up.  There were pieces that explained the functionality of the original steam engine that operated the drawbridge function.  It was all very interesting.  Of course, I lost Cas for a moment at an old map of London.  He had to stop and ask the employee about the map, and as it turns out, his instinct was spot on.  The map was apparently one of the first ones made to represent London as a version of its modern self.  

After we left the Tower Bridge, we made our way past the Tower of London to the dock where the included 30 minute trip on the Thames took off.  It was also quite informative, though this time, the information came courtesy of an actual human who talked about the various buildings, the many bridges we went under and the very river we were traveling on.  That was an interesting little mini-cruise, and for added fun, there was a waiter who brought out drinks.  Don’t mind if we do. It was actually a sunny day, and it was just a little warm with no shade trees around.  

When we got off the boat, we stopped for lunch.  It was a kind of self-styled tapas lunch, as we just selected three appetizers and made a nice meal of them.  We were a bit hungry, but we didn’t want to over-eat.  We have our dinner cruise on the Thames this evening.  

After our light lunch, we hopped back on a bus and took it all the way to Buckingham Palace, learning about Fleet Street, Cleopatra’s Needle, MI-5, The Shard- you name it, if it was part of the pre-recorded audio, we learned it.  And we’ll probably forget about 90% of it.  But hey, some retention is better than none.  We were on a mission, though, to see the unflappable palace guards in their red jackets and fuzzy hats.  Check and check.  They were pretty far away from us, but there they were, immobilized by duty and tradition, as any good palace guard should be.  At that point, we really lacked the time for the full tourist experience, mostly, because we were kind of sweaty, and we want to be clean and presentable for our fancy-ish dinner.  We hopped into an underground station, took one train to another and came back to our room.  It’s nice to cool down a little after the day we had.  It was wonderful, sure, but it was a little warm.  What am I taking about- a week from now, we’ll be back in Dallas and today’s London temps will seem like a dream.  I mean, the high was 80 today.  We were just moving around a lot in the sunshine.  Regardless, 80 or higher, you want to get a little dolled up for a fancy dinner, right?  I know I do.  I have the best date a girl could get on this or any body of water, so I had better get to it and comb my hair.  I’ll tell you all about the dinner cruise in the morning.  For now, here’s a really fun photo of us on the glass part of the walkway between the two towers of Tower Bridge.  The employee there assured us that each panel of glass could hold five tons, though he didn’t specify if that was metric or standard.  I think Cas and I would have been in the clear, either way.

Here, again, are our photos: tinyrul.com/dunlap-pl