LONDON 3A: part 1 of our day in the South Bank

We're staying where the red center marker is; yesterday we
went out to Kew Gardens (orange market on left), today
we went to the South Bank area, just by the river Thames.

Th 26 May 

I was able to complete the entire narrative portion of the post about this day, Thursday, but I fell asleep before adding photos. For now I'll just post the intro section, which does have a map and photo, and plan to do a continuation post (LONDON 3B) tomorrow. I'll also say that it was another great day.

Today was more of a real London city day. We spent the day in the South Bank area, where you can find the Globe (as in the recreation of Shakespeare's Globe theater), the Tate Modern (a museum of modern art), and the National Theater. St. Paul's Cathedral is nearby, too, on the north side of the river, but we didn't go there today. It's wonderful how easy it is to get places. On both days we've been able to get to where we want to go on the District line of the Tube, without having to transfer.

London feels very different from any of the other places on this trip; it's the only big city we're seeing, and it's a huge, sophisticated, international city. Already we've noticed hearing lots of different languages all the time, which we actually remember noticing on our trip 23 years ago as well. Everything's bigger and busier. Even the cars, on average, are a little bigger. In Bath and elsewhere on the trip, cars were noticeably small (on average). SUVs or minivans are still rare in London, but there are more regular sedan size cars, and to my surprise I still see the classic black London taxis (also a remembered feature from our earlier trip). 

TO BE CONTINUED