By Jim Hunt for the News and Journal
Landing at Heathrow Airport around 8:00AM, we gathered our luggage and headed out
to find a cab, or hackney, as it is called on that side of the pond. Lined up outside the
terminal was several black cabs and the driver jumped out and started to help us with
our luggage. The unique cars are very common in London and any movie or news story
about the city will inevitably have either a red double decker bus or a black cab in the
background. We made our way to the hotel about 9:30AM and checked our luggage
with the clerk, as our room would not be ready until around 3:00PM. The hotel was still
serving breakfast and we enjoyed our first meal in England at the breakfast buffet and it
was delicious.
We ventured out to do a few hours of sightseeing before getting into our room and our
first stop was the Waterloo Train Station. The station was opened in 1848 and rebuilt in
- Serving over 55 million passengers in 2023, the station is a busy hub of activity
and has an array of shops, restaurants, and stores, in addition to dozens of train
platforms and an underground station, far below the ground floor.
The station is somewhat haphazardly built and does not have a grand entrance like Union Station in Washington, DC or Grand Central Station in New York City. You approach it from the
street, and it looks like a warehouse or some other type of industrial building with aging
brick arches and graffiti sprayed randomly on the walls.
Despite this, we fell in love with the station, and it provided us a launching space for our daily adventures.
A short fifteen-minute walk from our hotel and we were standing on the sidewalk next to
the Thames River. It reminded me, a little, of the Seine River in Paris, but there is a
distinct brownish color to the water that is indictive of the pollution in the water, due to
the growth of the population growth of London. Big Ben sits proudly along the river and
is one of the most distinctive sites in the city. We also were near the London Eye, the
world’s largest cantilevered observation wheel and the most popular paid for visitor
attraction. We had purchased tickets for later in the week and our granddaughter was a
little skeptical after seeing how high it was.
Being Easter Sunday, we headed across the Westminster Bridge to see Westminster
Abbey and arrived just as Sunday services were letting out. Westminster Abbey is an
incredible building with a history dating back to the 13 th Century. It has been the site of
every Coronation starting in 1066 and it still has regular worship services each day. The
building itself is one of the most beautiful structures in the world and is the burial site for
over 3000 kings, statesmen, poets, scientists, and warriors. We got to see the ministers
greeting the worshippers at the church door, dressed in their Easter garments.
As we made our way back to the hotel, we looked at our watch and realized that we had
walked over six miles, getting acquainted to our home for the next seven days. London
is such a large and interesting city that it is impossible to see it all in one trip, but we
filled each day with new and exciting discoveries. Stay tuned…