Thames River cruise (south shore)

The return trip on the water taxi makes three stops (one on the north shore, and two on the south), whereas the trip from St. Catherine's to Westminster is a non-stop journey.

We start with the London Eye, which is just across the bridge at Westminster.  The Eye is the tallest ferris wheel in Europe at 135m tall.  It has 32 capsules, with a capacity of 800 people and take about 30 minutes to do one revolution.

I'm hoping to find the time to go for a ride, but the queues are quite long for this popular attraction.

Just beside the Eye is the Sea Life Aquarium.  As you may know, I used to have a lot of aquariums at home, and would normally be very interested in visiting here, but as this is my first time to London, and time is scarce, I think there are more uniquely British places I would like to visit.

Moving back towards the east, we pass the Tate Modern, a modern art gallery that is housed in a building that used to be a power plant.  It has been described as the ugliest building in London.  You be the judge:

Next, we have Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, which is a replica of Shakespeare's original Globe Theatre.  This is actually supposed to be a really interesting place to visit, so I hope I can find time to get over and have a look around.

Close by is the Anchor, a pub that has been running (not necessarily in the same location) for more than 400 years.  Despite being a tourist attraction, the reviews for food, service, and cleanliness, are less than stellar.

A little further along, there is a replica of "The Golden Hinde", which was the ship in which Sir Francis Drake sailed around the world in 1577.  Drake was given a charter by Queen Elizabeth I allowing him to attack and loot ships belonging to England's enemies (primarily the Spanish).  Drake regarded himself as a "privateer", though the Spanish referred to him as a "pirate".  Drake collected so much booty that they had to replace the ship's ballast with the treasure collected.

The replica ship has actually followed Drake's path around the world twice, and is now trying to raise enough money to make the journey again.

Also, on the south shore, and shown in a previous post, is a modern sky scraper called the Shard.  Just opened on July 5th, 2012, the Shard is the tallest building in Europe at 309.6m.  It includes both offices and residential spaces.  Supposedly the architect of the building was given a penthouse suite (worth 30 million pounds!) for his role in designing the building.

And finally, as we make our way back to St. Catherine's docks, we pass by the HMS Belfast, once the largest and most powerful cruiser in the Royal Navy.  The HMS Belfast played a crucial role in WWII, sinking German battle cruiser "Scharnhorst", and playing a role in the D-Day landings.

Did you see how I snuck in one more picture of the Tower Bridge?

I ended up getting back to the hotel around 3:30pm, and was looking forward to a nice long sleep (till about 10:30pm) before getting up to go back to work.  Unfortunately, the hotel had scheduled a fire alarm test for 5:00pm, which scared the hell out of me!  I had been forewarned that this would happen (every Monday at this time), but I had forgotten.  Yikes!