Popular City Sights

DYK (did you know) that Big Ben isn't the tower you're looking at? The tower is called St. Stephens Tower or the Clock Tower. Big Ben is really the bell inside and, when it rings, it sounds wonderful. We were told that tours up into the tower were available.....can you imagine being up there when the bell tolled???

Of course the statue in front (it's really in a park across the street) is Winston Churchill. The park had almost a dozen other statues, including one of Abraham Lincoln.
In the same area, beside the park is Westminster Abbey, the 700+ year old church that contains the burial crypts of many kings, queens, poets and other important people of their day. We heard that they were holding Evensong Services at 5 PM and, since we were quite tired from walking all day, we went in to hear the service. It was so beautiful. Listening to the very practiced choral group, taking in the splendor of the architecture/stained glass/statuary within the Abbey and feeling the deep sense of history associated with the place was very moving for me.

Going from one extreme to the other, we could see in the distance (from the Westminster Bridge beside the Tower) one of London's newer landmarks, the London Eye. It was erected for the Millennium celebration and was so popular the powers that be decided to keep it as a tourist attraction. And what an attraction it is...it's now the number one paid tourist destination in Great Britain! More on this later.