Welcome to London! We are going to go on a tour of my three favorite places in London! The first place to see is the National Gallery, just north of Trafalgar Square. Coming out of the Charing Cross Station, the beautiful building sits behind you with its regal pillars and sitting at the top of some steps so you can see it from a few blocks away. The National Gallery is someplace I could spend hours in – not only does it house beautiful paintings from famous painters such as Degas, Monet, and Renoir, but it is also a stunning building on its own. The gallery displays paintings from the mid-13th century up until 1900. Each room takes you through different time periods with more religious paintings earlier on and the paintings that many people know farther in the gallery (think impressionist paintings from the 1800s). I love this gallery because it has a few of my favorite artists, Degas, Monet, and Renoir, and paintings of theirs that I haven’t seen before. The National Gallery is a place where you can sit on the bench in the middle of the room and stare at the paintings for hours!
Our next stop is Westminster Bridge. It crosses the River Thames with a stunning view of the Southbank – the County Hall building, London Eye, and Old War Offices on one side of the bridge and Palace of Westminster and the new high rises of Battersea on the other side. You can normally find performers and illusionists on the pedestrian walkways along the sides of the bridge. One a nice sunny day, rare in London, I love to stand on the bridge and just look out to the different sides of London – lots of historic and parliamentary buildings with high rises off in the distance on both sides. This is a spot that I can really look at London with tourists stopping every few feet and businesspeople commuting over the bridge to get to work.
The last site on our tour is Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park in Kensington. On a beautiful and sunny day, I could spend the entire day outside in Hyde Park. There’s lots of green space to sit down and talk with friends and plenty of paths to walk or run through the park. At the south-end of the Kensington Gardens is the Albert Memorial, commissioned by Queen Victoria in memory of her husband, Prince Albert. This statue sits on a pavilion as a Gothic style statue. On the west side of Kensington Gardens is Kensington Palace, home to some of the Royal Family. You can enjoy classic afternoon tea at the estate and then walk through the grounds of Kensington Gardens.
These three places are my top sites in London, places I could spend days exploring and I hope you can too!