![\"Big](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/big_ben_london.jpg?resize=500%2C320&ssl=1\" "\\"Big")
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This is a much delayed post about my tour of London.\u00a0 It took me a whole week to download, post-process, and upload all pictures to my Flickr photostream, and I didn’t want to blog without all of them being up, so apologies for the delay.<\/p>\n
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First of all, what have I seen?\u00a0 Took a bus from Hilton Olympia Hotel at High Kensington Hotel, passing by the famous Hyde Park, to Trafalgar Square.\u00a0 From there, walked down the Whitehall Parlament street, saw the Big Ben around the corner and continued walking down the Abington street.\u00a0 Crossed the river Thame, walked up to the Westminister bridge, and further up to the London Eye.\u00a0 A short break for the London Eye trip up and down, and then more walking all the way to the Tower bridge.\u00a0 Crossed the Thames river once again and went into a diner near the Tower of London.\u00a0 That was enough walking, especially after the food and pints, so the tour continued on the bus, which took me around the city up and down, left, and right, in corners and circles, until I ended up at the Baker’s Street next to Madam Tussod’s Museum.\u00a0 Spent almost two hours in, and then took a subway back to the Trafalgar Square, where I had and excellent stake with more beer at Smollensky’s Grill Bar.\u00a0 After that, took the bus back to the hotel. Here is the Google Maps link<\/a> to the center of London, and here is the screenshot of that with my walking route marked in blue (click for the larger version).<\/p>\n Secondly, here are all those pictures that I’ve taken:<\/p>\n Thirdly, my impressions.<\/p>\n The city.\u00a0 Really amazing.\u00a0 Lots of beautiful architecture, parks, statues, museums, spaces, history, and everything.\u00a0 Very well mixed together.\u00a0 One of hand, there is a lot of stuff there.\u00a0 On the ohter hand, everything is spaced out nicely.\u00a0 Very harmouneous.\u00a0\u00a0 It felt like I’ve seen quite a bit of everything, but also that a lifetime won’t be enough to see even half of what is there.<\/p>\n The people.\u00a0 Was a bit surprised as to how many different peoples are mixed in on the streets.\u00a0 Of course, I realize that I’ve been mostly around tourist attractions, but even when away from the center of London, it still felt like every race, age, and nation has been represented on the streets.\u00a0 Very cool.<\/p>\n The transport.\u00a0 Very well organized, efficient, and clean.\u00a0 Buses and subway are all over the place.\u00a0 Maps, tickets, notifications, roadworks announcements – all well taken care off.\u00a0 It was also nice to see how much attention is given to disabled people – priority seats, voice notifications, stations with special access, labels on the map, etc.<\/p>\n The rythm.\u00a0 Most of the big cities are well known for their crazy rythms – everything moves fast, people in hurry, nobody has no time for anything.\u00a0 London wasn’t like that a lot.\u00a0 Some people were in hurry, yes.\u00a0 But there were plenty of slow walkers around.\u00a0 People in parks.\u00a0 People jogging.\u00a0 People wondering around.\u00a0 Very calm atmosphere for the city of its size.<\/p>\n The beers.\u00a0 The last but not the least are the beers.\u00a0 First of all, they are everywhere.\u00a0 Secondly, there is a great choice of brands and flavours.\u00a0 Thirdly, either they are fresh, or their water is different, or both, or something else, but they taste very different from what we drink in Cyprus.\u00a0 Even the same brands, like Guiness for example, have a totally different taste.\u00a0 So much better that I miss them already, and it’s been only a week.<\/p>\n These are, of course, the brief reactions.\u00a0 I’ve been very imporessed and I want to go back and spend more time there.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n This is a much delayed post about my tour of London.\u00a0 It took me a whole week to download, post-process, and upload all pictures to my Flickr photostream, and I didn’t want to blog without all of them being up, so apologies for the delay.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[859,2976,479,2975],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-11532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-personal","tag-experience","tag-london","tag-tourism","tag-uk"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11527,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2009\/02\/27\/in-london\/","url_meta":{"origin":11532,"position":0},"title":"In London","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"February 27, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"So here I am, in London, UK. The journey took a bit more time than planned.\u00a0 There were some heavy thunderstorm over Larnaca airport, so we had to stay on the ground.\u00a0 Overall we spent a bit more than one hour in the airplane before the skies finally cleared enough\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":16261,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2012\/05\/01\/london-olympics-security-craze-surface-to-air-missiles\/","url_meta":{"origin":11532,"position":1},"title":"London Olympics security craze – surface to air missiles","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"May 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Yet another story from Slashdot: I have to admit, when I first read about this I thought it was a hoax, but unfortunately it's true. The UK government is considering placing surface-to-air missiles on residential buildings in London for the duration of the London Olympics. From the article: 'The Ministry\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":27769,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2017\/07\/16\/london-trip\/","url_meta":{"origin":11532,"position":2},"title":"London Trip","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"July 16, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"As some of you already know, I've spent most of this week in London, UK. \u00a0My first and only time in London was back in 2009, when I went there for a PHP conference (see this post, and this post). This trip was very different. \u00a0I stayed longer than the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Swan Pub, London, UK","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/swan-pub-375x500.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":24819,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2015\/10\/06\/aphrodites-rock-london-pride-porter\/","url_meta":{"origin":11532,"position":3},"title":"Aphrodite’s Rock London Pride Porter","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"October 6, 2015","format":"image","excerpt":"Aphrodite's Rock London Pride Porter","rel":"","context":"In "Instagram"","block_context":{"text":"Instagram","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/photography\/instagram\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Aphrodite's Rock London Pride Porter","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/12132784_1504751566504173_762988092_n-500x500.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":17991,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2013\/04\/12\/london-calling\/","url_meta":{"origin":11532,"position":4},"title":"London Calling","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"April 12, 2013","format":"image","excerpt":"Really beautiful image by Colin Findlay, via Flickr blog.","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Calling-London.jpg?fit=800%2C534&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Calling-London.jpg?fit=800%2C534&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Calling-London.jpg?fit=800%2C534&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Calling-London.jpg?fit=800%2C534&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":16017,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2011\/12\/20\/winning-the-war-on-terror\/","url_meta":{"origin":11532,"position":5},"title":"Winning The War On Terror","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"December 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Cyprus Mail recently covered the security measures that are being taken in London for the preparations for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. \u00a0Here are a few quotes: SNIPERS in helicopters will patrol the skies over London [...] based on HMS Ocean, the largest ship in the Navy, anchored in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11532"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/keyring_services?post=11532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"London](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/london-300x152.jpg?resize=300%2C152&ssl=1\" "\\"London")
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