United Kingdom holiday : Day of glorious sunshine

Wow! When the English weather decides to shine it is really magnificent. The sun shone brightly all day and the air was crisp. Everything sparkled. London was crowded perhaps due to the marathon race tomorrow but everyone seemed in good spirits. We had heard that multiculturalism had failed in England but we have not seen this at all in London. From what we have seen it works well.

First stop of the day is Hyde park. The cold winter has meant a late blooming of the bulbs but today they are out in glory.

I was so excited to see squirrels. There seems to be quite a few in the park

Next we walked to the Serpentine to see about boat hire. Geoff has this desire to row me around the Serpentine. Maybe another day as we are planning a Westminster tour at 11am.

We make our way towards Westminster. First stop is the Wellington Arch and War Memorial.

Apparently the arch originally was built in what is now the huge intersection and had to be moved stone by stone. It is obviously to commemorate the victory of Wellington at Waterloo.

We climbed up inside the arch and there was a display on British archeology. From the top there were great views.

Looking up towards Buckingham Palace

Also it gave great shots of the top of the Arch

We just happened to be there when the Queen's Life Guards were on their way to Buckingham palace. What a magnificent sight!

Then it was time for our tour- One Thousand Years of history.

We started at Big Ben. The guide gave us all sorts of interesting information. The bell itself is called Big Ben but the clock tower has been renamed the ElizabethTower after the Queens Jubilee

There are words that go with with the chimes and these are attributed to William Crotch on a phrase from Handel's Messiah. The words are an allusion to Psalm 37:23–24, are: "All through this hour/Lord be my guide/And by Thy power/No foot shall slide". Wow if we were reminded of this every hour it would be great

We got great photos of Big Ben throughout the day from different sides

The Houses of Parliament complex have a long and interesting history.

St Edward the Confessor built a royal palace on what was then an island site at about the same time that he built Westminster Abbey (1045-50), and the island and surrounding area soon became known as Westminster. The Palace of Westminster was the monarch’s main residence until fire destroyed most of it in 1512. After that it served as the home of Parliament and almost all subsequent Parliaments have met there.

In 1834 fire destroyed almost every part of the rebuilt Houses of Parliament leaving only Westminster Hall, the detached Jewel Tower and the Undercroft Chapel, Cloisters and Chapter House of St Stephen’s standing. Immediately after the fire, King William IV offered Buckingham Palace to Parliament hoping to dispose of a building that he disliked, but his offer was declined.

In 1836 Charles Barry’s proposal for rebuilding the Palace was chosen out of 97 entries. The New Palace was to be much larger than its predecessor and the design incorporated the remains of the Old Palace (with the exception of the Jewel Tower). The design involved reclamation of a significant amount of land from the Thames to enable the building of the principal facade. Construction started in 1840 and was completed in the late 1850s.

http://imvisitinglondon.com/thehousesofparliament.html

We walked around the residential areas.

Front of Westminster Abbey

The Jewel tower. The Jewel Tower dates back almost 650 years. It was built around 1365 to house Edward III’s treasures and was known as the ‘King’s Privy Wardrobe’. One of only two buildings from the medieval Palace of Westminster to survive the fire of 1834, the tower features a 14th century ribbed vault. it had the remains of the wall still there.

Lots of shots around the area