Let me take you by the hand....

and lead you, not to Kew (till tomorrow!) through the streets of London...

I am on a week's holiday from work this week, and Tuesday dawned fair and in promise of warm (hot even for October!) sunshine... so I hot-footed it for London town... The sun did indeed shine, and I am not sure how I will edit the photos to a manageable blog post length's worth... (I can't - there are lots here!)

 I decided to go to St Paul's first.. and turned in the direction away from a crowd of school children...!

Lots of tourists still in London, but I managed to avoid most of them in my pictures...


Look how blue the sky was!

Then I remembered my friend Kirsten had told me how to find the "wobbly" Millenium bridge - and with the help of various tourist maps around St Paul's, I headed off... LOVE this big stainless steel ball that gives a fish-eye view of St Paul's (and me!) behind it...

 and here's the bridge! Not wobbling today but I just loved the view of the ancient city and St Paul's at the end of it...so much so that I took loads of photos!

 but I'll just include a couple... ish.

 and from the side...

 from the south side of the bridge it is but a hop and skip to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (who knew? Not me...) I didn't take the tour because it wasn't cheap.... like £13 I think!

and then I followed the signs towards Borough Market - somewhere else I've never been, came across this lovely old pub

and the Clink prison museum - on the sight of the prison of the same name, that gave all prisons the slang name of 'clink'... didn't go inside here either, though that was more reasonably priced... maybe another day!

and Francis Drakes' Golden Hinde  before finally finding the Market... mostly the stalls had closed (or possibly not yet open?)








but it was fascinating, under the arches of the railway station.

Southwark cathedral, right by the Market. never seen that before either!

from there I walked further along the river (have just realised the photos have loaded in the wrong order, sorry!)  to the Tower, where I bought a sandwich and had a rest... it was too warm to linger long and I should have got a drink here too!!

the Shard, over the other side of the river - decided not to take the trip up that either at £30 unless you pre-book.(when it's £25)... gulp!! views would have been good though, given the fabulous weather... again, maybe another day!

 these are the ones that were out of order!  Tower Bridge from my walk along t'river....

 and the dolphin fountain outside the Tower hotel ...

 from there it is a short walk to St Katherine's dock, which I always have a look round - and I didn't know (or had forgotten) that the Royal Barge Gloriana, from the Jubilee river pageant last year, is moored here - it looked much smaller than I had imagined, but still bright gold sparkly...

 from there, I jumped on a tube back to Westminster for a quick walk round, outside only, the Houses of Parliament

 and Westminster Abbey, before walking back to Victoria to collapse onto a train home!  I walked from 10 until 2 apart from the short tube hop, and my short lunch break... no wonder I was shattered!
Come back tomorrow, when I share Kew from today.... no resting around here for me!!