The Walk from Trafalgar Square and on the Tower Bridge....Kew Gardens.

 We  started in the morning, to go to Trafalgar Square and  went by walk to see places from  Trafalgar Square.

In the Trafalgar Square they had  arranged Platforms for some Music Show.  So it did not look as impressive as it was the other day.

I took pictures of myself  on the steps of National Gallery which looked so Majestic.  Alas we did not have time to go and see inside.  How I wish I had time for that too.

We walked up to Big Ben. We could see many nice Historic Buildings on the way.  It was such a lovely walk.   We did go to  the place where the No. 10 Downing Street is located but  it is  gated and we could not see the actual house.

  As we had decided earlier ,  We went to the Tower Bridge exactly at the time of  opening and bought tickets and went up to the Upper Bridge.  Lovely view from atop the Bridge.
There were many pictures of lovely Bridges on the wall of the Upper Corridor.    I was so happy that I had seen / walked/ drove on some of the world famous Bridges.
                           
                                                                Pictures of Bridges.

This Bridge I have not seen and not sure where it is located but it looks so lovely.

This Golden Gate Bridge, which is located in San Fransisco is one of my favourite places in USA

This Bosphorus Bridge  is in Istanbul in Turkey on  which we had  gone by Bus.

The lovely Millennium Bridge which we had just crossed the other day in London.

 This Bridge in Paris which we were to cross in just two days in Paris.

This being the time of Olympic Games  there were pictures of the venues of Modern Olympics held in different parts of the world. Hubby dear took pictures of each venue  (photo)and I would like to at least record the names of the venues in my blog.

1896  Athens, 1900 Paris, 1904 St.Louis, 1908 London, 1912 Stockholm, 1920 Antwerp, 

1924 Paris, 1928 Amsterdam, 1932 Los Angeles, 1936 Berlin, 1948 London, 1952 Helsinki.

1956 Melbourne, 1960 Rome, 1964 Tokyo, 1968 Mexico City, 1972 Munich, 1976 Montreal, 

1980 Moscow, 1984 Los Angeles, 1988 Seoul, 1992 Barcelona, 1996 Atlanta, 2000 Sydney,

2004 Athens,  2008 Beijing,  2012 London

It should be noted that there was no Olympics held in  1916, 1940, 1944 due to the two World Wars.

View from the upper bridge of Tower Bridge.

When we got down we were taken to the Engine rooms and old Mechanical Engines which were used to lift the Bridge was kept there.  We found out the schedule  time the Bridge opens  to allow the Ships to pass under for the next day. It was 9.45 a.m.   to 10.15 a.m. and we decided to be there the next day to watch this.

My husband wanted to see the Olympics Location , which is in Stratford.  We bought up and down ticket to Stratford.  (You would have guessed by now it is outside the zone to which we had ticket).

  Lot of crowd was there in the station but once we went out,  we were not allowed to go to the Stadium as the Para Olympics were to be held there in one or two days.

  So we had to just return from the Stratford Station.    We were to change train in Nottingham hill station to take a train to Gloucester Station to reach our Hotel room.   I could see lots of crowd in the train which I had not seen even during the peak hours on week days, and wondered why.  We got down and every body seemed to be getting down at this station.

  Normally people just run in the London underground , but today people were just moving inch by inch along with the crowd.

  When we came to the point where we had to take the turn to take the other 'line' to go to  Gloucester, we were stopped by Police and said no 'interchange' and only exit.  

We found out that Nottingham hill carnival was going on and every one was going to attend the carnival and that is why only exit was allowed as every body seemed to be going to the carnival. I was surprised to see so many people with children .  Traffic was being diverted and we finally managed to find out to take the Bus which goes to our place and  reached the hotel. (thanks to oyster card which was valid for bus also and we were  within zone 1 and 2.)

We came home and had lunch and started for Kew Garden  by Train . We had to pay the difference  which was less than a pound.   We could reach Kew Garden only at 3.30 p.m as we had lost considerable time in  going to Olympic stadium and the big confusion due to the carnival.

This is a huge botanical garden.  We bought tickets to go inside and once inside bought tickets to go around in a small  trailer like vehicle.  This is normally  a hop on /hop off  transport but we being late entrants into the garden, it was the last trip for the trailer.  So we decided to see the  garden once  just being in the trailer as it is a very huge garden.

Once back from the trailer round,  we went by walk to see the glass houses  and places near by inside the garden.  The  garden has some two, three big glass houses built during Victorian era and lots of tropical plants were inside.  Whole garden was excellent.

Glass House.

Glass House.

Inside the Glass House

Oldest Tree

Some Flowers patches

We started back by around 5.30 p.m. and took a train to Waterloo.  Earlier I had seen the Harrods Stores while going some where else and taking the train by nearby station.   We went to that station and walked to Harrods.  This was a very famous name, when there were no shopping malls.   We decided we will just go and see it.  It was just another huge shopping mall, and the things were very expensive.  I just bought some small items just for the heck of it and the fun of carrying a  Harrods Shopping bag.

Thus ended our day .