London Travel Experience Day3 Afternoon – Tower Bridge, St. Paul, Camden & Soho

Still following me? You better are! I’m going to disclose more and more travel photos taken on my Western Europe travel now and then. I enjoy taking lots and lots of photos while travelling. No one could remember every single detail and experience on travel. Only by taking photos that I could recall those sweet memories 10 or 20 years later in future. 🙂

Still remember where we were in my last post? We walked from one side of the River Thames to another, crossing the Westminster Bridge, from Big Ben to London Eye. It suddenly rained and we hopped onto a London Red bus and hopped off at the Waterloo Station which is only few minutes away. Why were we there? We were there to take an underground train to our next destination in London, The Tower Bridge.

We would have walked there following the Thames Path route, passing by the National Theater and Tate Modern. Unfortunately, it rained intermittently on that day. So we decided to walk down stairs to underground platform instead.

Oops! Not really walking but rather standing on escalator, we took Bakerloo Line down south to Elephant & Castle and changed to Northern Line East to London Bridge station. It could actually be reached directly via Jubilee Line but it wasn’t operational on that day.

A view on the Waterloo station platform.

Once we stepped out of the station, London Dungeon is right in front of us. We are not the fans of it so we headed straight across the road into the new mixed commercial development of London called More London Riverside. I loved the concept from its design architect, Norman and Partners, where a live ‘Chi’ (the natural energy of the universe) of water drainage is introduced into the area and it flows straight out to the River Thames pinpointing to the Tower Bridge, as seen in the above photo.

All buildings within the development are so unique and modern with odd angled shape.

They are mainly occupied by big corporate giant such as Ernst & Young.

A few of the futuristic buildings in More London Riverside.

After a short walk passing through the More London Riverside, We came to the bank of River Thames with Tower Bridge in our eye sight. The beautiful scenic view was absolutely breathtaking. The sun was so bright though dark clouds were approaching.

A closer look at the Tower Bridge. The sky turned dark suddenly as dark clouds were being blown over by strong wind, overcasting the sky. Unexpected thing happened shortly… It started to rain! 🙁 I quickly covered my…. D60! What else? 🙂

We decided not to walk any further until the rain stopped. We popped into a Japanese restaurant in the area and had a cup of Japanese noodle soup. It tasted yummy! (Sorry, I wasn’t really a good food photographer that I finished eating the noodles before even remember snapping them!) Lunch without coffee wouldn’t be perfect. I bought a coffee from Costa Coffee next door. 🙂

London weather is as unpredictable as women temper! 🙂 The cloud faded away and the weather was back to sunny again! Tower Bridge looked even more gorgeous after the rain storm! Can you afford not to visit it while you are in London? Definitely no way!

From Big Ben we crossed over to South Bank area via Westminster Bridge. From More London Riverside we crossed back over to London city centre via this bridge called Tower Bridge!

I love the curve lines of its hanging structures.

A view towards the West of River Thames while walking on the bridge. Can you spot the ‘laid back’ looking London Bridge that is always confused with Tower Bridge at the far end of above photo? You can also spot the old and new commercial area opposite each other at either side of the river.

An overview of the new More London Riverside development. The oval shaped building is actually the City Hall of London.

Few photos of tower Bridge from different angle of view. Bright sunlight always is the key element in excellent travel photos! It really killed my SD card space quickly.

Across the river is another popular travel site of London, The Tower of London. Can you spot the huge crowd at its entrance?

It confused me with the Tower Bridge sometimes. I think it should be called as the Royal Palace and Fortress of Her Majesty of London instead. It houses the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom. We decided not to go in after looking at the huge crowd.

We proceeded to our next travel attractions of London, The St. Paul’s Cathedral, an Anglican cathedral on Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London. It was used for the marriage of Charles, Prince of Wales and the late Lady Diana Spencer, in case you missed that out.

St. Paul’s Cathedral is one of London’s most famous travel sites. Measuring 365 feet (111m) high, it is among the highest cathedral in the world.

A view on the impressive huge and high facade column at Great West door.

A closer look at those figurines carved on the facade architecture.

The surrounding scenes and buildings of St. Paul Cathedral.

We took another underground train via Central Line to Tottenham Court Road, then via Northern Line West to our next destination, the Camden Markets. We really made full use of our One-Day Travel card that costs us £5.60 per person.

I purposely made a stop at Tottenham Court Road for those unique and artistic mosaic decorations on walls and ceiling.

(Read also Travel By Photos to Camden Markets) In less than 10 minutes, we were at Camden Town underground station for the famous open markets area that collectively named as Camden Markets. We spent quite some times strolling down the Camden High Street. It was Monday so it wasn’t as crowded as weekends. Do remember not to take underground to Camden Town on weekends. Travel Tips: The exit way of Camden Town Underground station is closed from 1300-1730 on Saturday and Sunday to prevent overcrowded at the station. Get there either before or after the afternoon if you are visitors taking underground.

We couldn’t find any thing to buy in Camden Markets though. We decided to take a bus (with our Travel Card again) back to Tottenham Court Road for another round of shopping!

I started to feel a bit hungry and bought this street food in London as seen in above photo. It’s honey roasted peanuts. They were not as tasty as they look though. Peanuts are soft and not crunchy 🙁

I bought a Bensons MapGuides on London for £2.25 when I was in St. Pancras Station the day before. I took it out and started to look for Endell Street in Covent Garden. It wasn’t far away from Tottenham Court Road and it is where the famous Fish & Chips restaurant The Rock & Sole Plaice is. (Read also The Rock & Sole Plaice Fish & Chips Restaurant) We had our typical English dinner there.

The portion of chunky chips was so generous that we could never finish. We were extremely full at the end. What would be the best activities then? Walking . We walked to the Soho area which is only 10 minutes away.

Soho is the happening night spot area in London city centre, a stone throw away from China Town London. Local English pubs, restaurants, sex shops, gay bars and musical theaters are all scattered around Soho area. We explored the streets by walking in under 10°C cool weather. (Read also the Travel by Photos to Soho)

Click HERE to view all the above travel photos of London in original high resolution format.

We took Piccadilly Line underground train back to Russel Square station where our Smart Russel Hostel is. We wrapped up our short London sightseeing travel at Tesco Express in front of the station buying a carton of Carling beer… 🙂 We will take EuroStar tomorrow for another top city in Europe, Paris! – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog