The Favs

I would have to say that my three favorite walks from our wonderful selection of walks would have to be Westminster & St. James, Central Parks, and Bloomsbury. 

• Westminster = I loved seeing the Dean's yard. It was very quaint and peaceful. It was also great to see Parliament, Westminster, St. James Palace. 
• Central Parks = I loved Barclays Bikes!! The parks in London are amazing and I really enjoyed getting to see all of them in one walk! 
• Bloomsbury = just a really fun walk. It was really relaxed and easy. We got to see the British Museum which is awesome and they had great lion statues. Bloomsbury is also a really fun area and has lots of great restaurants! 

That's it folks - no more walks!!! Hope you enjoyed them all as much as me :)

Marylebone # 10

Last, but certainly not least. In fact ( Dr. Crowe) it might be the best walk I did all term!! For anyone who is wondering Marylebone was not a required walk, but... we thought it was and so we grabbed our books and took off on the walk without a second thought. We had no leader, it was a team effort and looking back I'd have to say it was a wonderful team decision. We learned A LOT and it was highly valuable to our education.

This is us in front of St. Marylebone's church, which was just one of the fantastic sites we saw on our walk. We also found the Marylebone library and checked out books for our wonderful English class. More than anything we got to experience a new London neighborhood and exercise our minds and bodies :) 

Lambeth and South Bank # 9

This walk was along the river for the most part and it was wonderful! It also made me realize how much I am going to miss London! We walked along the river by the London Eye and over behind Parliament and it was great to just stroll along and see some of London's great sites! We got off at the Temple tube station and crossed the Waterloo Bridge. We took our photo on the bridge because it had a great view of Parliament and Big Ben in the background.

We got to see some great things such as the Jubilee Gardens, London Aquarium, St. Thomas's Hospital / Florence Nightingale Museum, and the Archbishops palace/ park. St. Thomas's Hospital is huge and it was fun to see from the outside!

Central Parks Walk # 8

# 8! Two more and I am all done :) This by far was one of the funnest walks! We did it on bikes instead of walking and it was a blast!! I think that it has been my favorite walk so far! We rented bikes in Kensington Park right off of Bayswater and started our adventure there. We rode through Kensington on to Hyde park and headed over to Green Park and Buckingham Palace.We biked around the Round Pond and over to the Serpentine River. It was really fun getting to go through the parks on bike, we got to see everything in much less time and it was wonderful! Biking was just such a fun experience! The weather was great and it was refreshing to get a little bit of exercise that wasn't walking!

We took a break at Buckingham, found a nice lady to take a picture of us and had a blissful bike ride all the way home! 

Inns of Court # 7

Inns of Court? What does that even mean?? That was something I was asking myself the entire walk! And no, sadly I have no idea what it means. I do know however that me and leading walks probably are not the best combination, I'll give myself the benefit of the doubt this time and say it was the silly walks book though! Tonight Amanda G. , Sarah S. and I did the Inns of Court walk.
We started off at the Temple tube station and made our way up Milford Lane to Essex street over to St. Clements Church and the Royal Courts of Justice. The Royal courts are HUGE and look very much like a royal building. I was surprised to learn that they are used mainly for civil courts and the criminal cases happen in a different court house. Probably not intriguing to anyone else, but I really like law so I found it interesting :)

We made our way by a TON of pubs and lots of drunk people and a large amount of creeper guys hanging out on the corner of Lincoln Fields. Probably wasn't our smartest idea to do this walk later in the evening, but oh well we survived!! We made the corner around Lincoln Fields and made our walk to High Holborn Street. The walk was going pretty smoothly, probably due to random facts of information in the book I found interesting! Holborn is where our path got a little tricky! We were able to find Gray's Inn and the gardens, but once we reached the Griffen we struggled!

Little did we know that after a certain time of day most of the public gates and walkways are closed making our walk pretty... well adventurous! We wandered around for a good 5-10 minutes trying to figure out where on earth we were supposed to go and then a nice stranger gave us some directions and informed us that the gates we needed were closed! We got back on track and made it to the Knights Templar. It was great weather and not many people were out so it was nice to wander through the courtyards by the Knights Templar chapel and other courts of the old monastery. After making it through the gardens and thinking we were locked in we found the way out and made our way back to the tube station!

Bankside and Southwark #6

Okay - So I was really tempted to title this "Bankside Yo." I have no idea why, but Bankside just seems really gangster to me. Hahah, you probably all think i'm super weird now! On to the walk. I lead my very first walk.. oooh big accomplishment, I know. Our walks are usually a team effort, but for homework sake I lead this one. It was a pretty quick walk and it wasn't until later last night when we went back to the Globe for All is Well that Ends Well that we realized just how far we had walked! The "we" I am referring to is Emily Stewart, Lauren Deaver, and myself. The Blackfriars tube station was closed, so we got off at Tower Bridge and started from the other end of the walk. It was super busy at the Tower of London with lots of wonderful tourists all around! We made our way around the tower and onto the Tower Bridge. I love the Tower Bridge, I think it is awesome! With all of the bright colors it reminds me of Disneyland!

We cross the bridge and made our way down towards the water along Queens Street. It felt great to walk along the river. The sun was out and it was just a great day! We turned at the Hay's Galleria and passed the London Dungeon and through the tube station. We then got to walk around Borough Market, which I absolutely love! I love markets and Borough has great food and awesome samples!! After the market we headed back towards the water and passed by Clink Museum. Clink used to be a debtors prison which I thought was really interesting! We kept walking along and passed the site of the actual Globe Theater and the Rose Theatre Exhibition. Then we came to the new Globe theater! We didn't stay long because it was crowded and we were coming back for a play that night!! We then hopped onto the Millennium Bridge and headed to the tube station to come home!

Bloomsbury anyone? # 5

Bloomsbury was a great walk! Short, sweet, and simple and we got to see some pretty fun things as well!
We started off at Tottenham Court Road and headed towards Bedford square. Along the way we passed the YMCA, which this will probably sound really dumb, but I didn't know they had YMCA's in Europe!
After Bedford square our walk took us behind the British Museum. Silly us, we didn't realize we were behind the Museum until the end of the walk where we went by the front... ooops! Oh well, there was a great Lion out front ( or back) and we thought we'd cozy up to him for some photos!

We continued our walk going down Handel street, named accordingly because Handel would give performances in the Hospital on that street. That was pretty fun fact that I learned along this walk! We went through St. George Gardens which I thought were beautiful. I love the gardens here and small park spaces - they are just so happy!

Just a fun tree arch we found!

One of the coolest parts of this walk, I thought, was getting to walk by the home of Charles Dickens! I couldn't help but get a picture on his front door :) It was fun to think what it would have been like to have been his next door neighbor! I think it would have been pretty awesome!! There were plaques on many of the buildings which told different writers who had lived there. From the looks of it, there were a lot!

A few streets down and couple corners to turn revealed a giant hospital. According to our handy dandy walk book it was a Hospital for Sick Children. It took up the entire street! We continued on our walk and crossed Cosmo place into Bloomsbury place. From Bloomsbury place we headed to Bloomsbury square and then past the front of the British Museum and then back to the tube and home!