11.24.07

Hey Kids, Look! Big Ben! Parliament!

Posted in London, Travel at 22:46 by Jeff

The weekend of Nov 2-4, Jon, CJ, Staci & I went to London so I could get my passport stamped outside of the Schengen Zone so I could remain in The Netherlands (and the EU) as a legal visitor. I had to go outside of the EU because of the Schengen Agreement, which essentially removed the borders of the ratifying member countries so people traveling between those countries can do so without needing visas and having their travel documentation/passport checked everytime they cross into another country, which an be pretty frequently when you consider that even the biggest countries in the European Union are smaller than Texas.

For example, traveling from Amstelveen, NL to Schiplaken, BE is ~185km, roughly the same distance as driving from Columbus to Cincinnati. Making the trip to Cincinnati doesn’t even leave the state, let alone the country (though I’m sure some of us feel like Cincinnati is in another world, but that’s another discussion.) If there was no Schengen Agreement, we’d have to have our passports checked every time we went and visited them and every time we came back. Without it, it’s like a train ride to Cincinnati.

However, because of this agreement, movement of visitors isn’t as easily tracked, which in my case, is bad. U.S. citizens are free to visit the EU without a visa, they just need their passport, thanks to agreements between the U.S. government and the European Union. This means I have to leave the Schengen Zone to get my passport stamped, which usually means going somewhere in the UK or Ireland. (There are other places I could go, but the list is shrinking due to more countries signing the agreement.)

Big Ben! Parliament!
Which gets us back to the purpose of this post: talking about our trip to London. Friday & Saturday, we did what good tourists do: we walked around and looked at stuff. Stuff meaning old buildings, royal palaces and gardens. You know, stuff. Also, I spent the better part of Friday & Saturday trying to see Big Ben from different areas of the city, and then when I did, I’d take a picture and say “Hey kids, look! Big Ben! Parliament!” and laugh. Jon thought it was funny. I don’t think Staci & CJ did after a while. Staci actually got a little nervous that I had a weird obsession with Big Ben & Parliament. (For the record, I am not obsessed, I just don’t know when I’ll ever have the chance to use that line as often in a 2 day period and for it to actually be Big Ben & Parliament.)

Changing of the Guard
Aside from looking for Big Ben & Parliament, we checked out Buckingham Palace, where we saw part of the Changing of the Guard. We couldn’t get close enough to the gates to see the actual ceremony in the courtyard, but we did get some great pics of the guards and horsemen coming and going.

London Eye
We didn’t get a chance to go on the London Eye due to the huge line and the cost, £15 for half an hour on a slow moving ferris wheel. Maybe next time. We did snap a few pics of it, though.

Kensington Gardens
On Sunday morning, before Staci & I had to catch our flight back to Amsterdam, and after Jon & CJ had already caught their train back to Belgium, We decided to head over to Kensington Gardens in Hyde Park. Really pretty area. Lots of foreign embassies on one of the bordering streets, though no pictures were allowed, presumably for security reasons.

Putney Bridge
We made one last stop out of our way on our way to the airport. Staci saw the stop for Putney Bridge when we first got to town on Friday, and asked several times to go, just to take a picture with the sign. We had time to kill, it wasn’t that far out of the way, and it was a nice day, so we went. We didn’t venture outside of the stadium for more than a minute because I was annoyed that Staci had decided she wanted to walk around even though she said we were just going for a picture (which, for those of you that know her, is never the case.) It could be a lovely area, but we don’t know.

So that’s the end of our London trip. We had a great time. We walked a lot, had dinner with a friend, took a lot of pictures (500+) and I got my passport stamp. Totally worth it.

Each of the pictures above opens in a new window and is of a different photo album. All told there are 183 pictures spread across 20 sub-albums. London is the top-most album and the best place to start. You can waste some time looking through them all at once if you’re bored, or come back every so often and look at a few pictures here and there. You have choices. Do what maximizes your enjoyment.

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