Walk along the River Thames

Note: this is Clock Tower, NOT Big Ben.  Big Ben is the chime inside of clock tower.  Don't ask a London local where Big Ben is unless you want to look like a huge tourist.  Look at how intricate it is!

This building with the flat tops on it is the British 'CIA' (well it's not really called the CIA but its similar to our CIA).  It's also been seen in numerous James Bond movies.

The group taking in London.  Can you tell we are new here?

Clock Tower in front of the River Thames.

The London Eye.  The largest ferris wheel in the world!

Just walking along the river...

This is the OXO building, the first advertisement in Britain.  They couldn't really advertise so they company built their logo OXO into the infrastructure.  Clever, eh?

Millennium Bridge, for walking pedestrians only.  They added the sides that curl up around in years after because the bridge 'wobbled' when people walked across it.

A remake of the Spanish Armada...although this model did actually sail around the whole world like the original one did.

London Bridge.

Making our way down the River Thames trail.

HMS Bellfast from WWII, it was a state of the art warcraft ship in its day.  

Ann Bolyn was executed here by Henry the 8th.

Tower Bridge:

Some views from on top of it looking out...

As you can see in the picture above, left,

it was a little rainy & wet.

Looking out from Tower Bridge.

And Tower Bridge itself, with a little bit of sunshine...

Today was my first official day of class in London.  Our Ball State London group was split into two different groups to take the walk along tour.  Somehow I managed to be lucky enough to go on the morning tour.  I woke up at 6:30 a.m. to a cold & rainy London.  Once some of the other girls here and I were off to the tube station we knew it would be a cold tour.

Needless to say once we actually were along the River Thames, on Tower Bridge it was cold, rainy and windy.  My fingers and toes were frozen in the first 10 minutes.  Yet, there were some highlights to the tour, besides seeing the amazing architecture of London: our professor bought our whole group a free coffee for being good sports, we saw the most beautiful buildings ever, we were informed about British history, monarchies, culture and commerce in 3 hours and the rain stopped after the first half hour!

Sorry the pictures and text are so messed up...I am still getting used to this new blog thing!  I can't believe how much I learned in my first day of class.  It was crazy to see old buildings that had been around for soooo long, hundreds of years.  They were beautiful too!  Why don't we save buildings in America?  Maybe we do...but not usually.  Anyways, I am on information overload right now from all the history and background I heard today.  It's a rainy day in London so maybe I should take a little cat nap...

Tomorrow is Obama's inauguration!! We are all planning on watching it in our flats AND since we are American we are suppose to get free admission into Madame Tussad's Wax Museum.  Yes!  Expect more pictures tomorrow...I don't have any classes Tuesday either =]