SUNDAY-London Bus Tour 1

We started Sunday on the move at 9:30, well-rested, and with a full English breakfast at our hotel. We've gotten on the clock here much better than in past trips overseas by starting our first day pushing really hard to stay outdoors and active. It's about 9:30PM as I draft this and we're feeling pretty much the same as if it were 9:30 at home.




We went straight off to an open-top, hop-on-hop-off city bus tour. These are a really good deal and we like to do these early in new cities to get a feel for where everything is. We bought two days worth of city bus tour. It can be a great way to just get around to the destinations you know you want to go to and they can often sell you tickets to those locations at the bus stop, usually at a discount.




Our trip took us today around the east side of central London, through pretty neighborhoods with interesting pubs, houses, and municipal buildings. It's all attractive architecture to me. I tend to just take pictures of whatever I think is interesting whether I have any idea or not what it is. I seem to really enjoy the clusters of smoke stacks on the tops of apartments, and especially things like seeing locals doing their thing on a Sunday morning, like this woman out for a smoke and a cup of coffee on her balcony.




I noticed right away that the street trees of central London are almost exclusively sycamore, ginko, and locust, with the sycamore the dominant choice. The unseasonable weather has kept most fall color from creeping in here.

They've had unusually warm weather here and with lots of sun. Today is no exception. This makes me a bit grumpy, as I really wanted overcast and CHILLY. C'mon London... i know you can do it. WHERE'S MY DREARY WEATHER???