Chris Alexander

On Engineering

A Guided Tour of London

7th July, 2012

We have some guests this weekend at our new London flat (I suppose I should post a catch up about that at some point) and today I have been leading what has turned into an extended tour of the City and the river.

We started off at our London Fields flat, and headed over London Fields itself. It was getting on into the afternoon, around 2, but we hadn’t eaten. So we stopped off at Broadway Market to grab a bite to eat.

However, if any reader has had the fortune of visiting Broadway Market on a Saturday lunchtime then you will know it is very easy to get carried away. Among today’s selections were hog rolls, shepherds pies, churros, chocolate brownies and more aside. No fudge guy today but hopefully he will be back soon, I need my sugar fix!

We headed along Columbia Road (no flower market until tomorrow but lots of hipster shops we gazed through the windows of) and weaved through side roads into the City. A quick stop at Liverpool St and we continued down Bishopsgate towards London Bridge.

On the way down there you get a great view of the Gherkin (thanks to them just demolishing a building on the corner at London Wall) and you see progress on The Pinnacle. Once you hit Londonv Bridge there are great views of Tower Bridge (with Olympic rings), the Shard (recently finished) and St Pauls.

If you head over London Bridge and take the second left (under the railway bridge) you very quickly end up at the foot of the Shard, which is a really brilliant looking building.

Once we had headed back towards London Bridge we popped through Borough Market (great place for lunch, open every day during the Olympics), and walked along the waterfront until the Millennium Bridge, and the Tate Modern.

I have never been here before but neither have I ever been one for art. Hence I have spent most of the time writing this post rather than looking around.

Overall its been quite a nice day moseying around London (if I do say so myself) and I thought perhaps there should be an app for that (maybe there already is?).