2022: Back to Europe…..(Part 3: London, and Bilbao (yes, Bilbao!))

As we departed the ship, we had a few hours to make our way to the Copenhagen Airport for our flight to London. We had passed through London’s Airports on many occasions, but we had never taken the time to actually hang out in the City. We had one week in between cruises and London was a logical stop for a few nights. I had hoped to go to Poland, but Russia’s war….or Special Military Operation…..had resulted in millions of Ukrainians fleeing for their lives into Poland. So, this was not the best time for Tourists to get in the way.

The free cruise bus to the metro wasn’t running for a couple of hours, so I made the mistake of opting for a Taxi cab to take us to the Metro. The driver didn’t understand or just felt like taking advantage of a tourist first thing in the morning. Anyway, 15 minutes and $90 later we were at the Airport. The Copenhagen Airport wasn’t crowded and we made our way through security and into the Priority Pass lounge quickly. They had a great selection of local beers on tap, but not my style at 10:00 in the morning.

Originally, we had booked an Airbnb in London, but they canceled on us at the last minute. However, I found a decent rate at the Hilton Metropole across the street from an Underground Station. Since we carry the American Express Hilton Aspire card, we have Diamond Status at all Hilton Properties which provides access to the Hotel Executive Lounges which in Europe usually means open bar and food for several hours each evening. Not a bad deal and the Hilton Metropole did not disappoint us.

Now transportation from the Airport was fairly easy but it did require us to switch from the train to the Underground, which was a little confusing for rookies like us with bags on their first venture into London City. What struck me was how handicap unfriendly the London Underground was. There were very few stations that didn’t require us to navigate at least a few flights of stairs. Not a big deal, if we didn’t keep ending up in the wrong place or at an exit that just happened to be closed on Sundays. However, it only took us about an hour to navigate ourselves from the London Gatwick Airport to the Hilton. We were able to check in and were upgraded to the Executive Floor. We had a few hours before happy hour began, so it was time to set off and explore London.

London is not the cleanest place in the world and the air was not great either. We had purchased the London pass for two days but we didn’t want to use that until the following day, so we took off walking. London is a big City and we went off to find some of locations we would visit on the following days. Walking around London was easy and it seemed quite safe. We made our was to Victoria Park and headed down to Buckingham Palace. The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee was only a few weeks away and the streets leading up to the palace were blocked but we could get a good view. From there we headed over to Piccadilly Circus (its a traffic circle) and then jumped on the Underground to head back to the hotel. First excursion into London…no problem and much less intimidating than New York city. Actually, it was “Quite Lovely”. At least that is what we gathered, since everyone in London uses that phrase in about every other sentence.

After a nice couple of happy hours we crashed and got ready to hit London running in the morning. Our plan was to use the London Pass which included the Hop-on Hop-off bus. However, it didn’t start running until 9, so we thought we would take the Underground to the London tower to be in line when it opened at 9 and beat the crowds. After breakfast we walked over to the Underground and began our journey. It took about 25 minutes but we were able to get to the Tower of London about 30 minutes before it opened. We qued up (another British term) and waited for the gates to open. The London Pass allowed us to skip the ticket line here and we were one of the first ones in. Now, I have to admit, I expected the Tower of London to be a tower. However, it is actually a castle, former prison and home to the Crown Jewels. I think the biggest disappointment here was visiting the crown jewels. I was expecting jewels that the Queen would wear…not actual crowns. Most of them just looked old and fake….but people would line up for hours to see them. Englanders do love their Que’s.

Next stop was a short walk away to the Tower Bridge. Tower Bridge (thank God) was actually a bridge and you could climb it! Turns out all the pictures that I had seen of “London Bridge” was actually of the “Tower Bridge”. London Bridge was just down the river and it was a bridge. A plain old freeway style bridge. The only reason you knew that it was “London Bridge” was that there was a sign on it. Tower Bridge was impressive and well worth the price of admission….it was included in the London Pass anyway. You climbed the stairs in one tower walked across the bridge’s second story with glass walkways, down the other tower into the mechanical room and then exited through the gift shop. The 1^st story of the bridge could actually be raised to let boats pass underneath…..of course didn’t seem too useful since the boats wouldn’t fit under “London Bridge” anyway. But it was still pretty cool.

After the Bridge, we headed over to the “Big Bus Tour” and jumped on to see how bad traffic really is in London. You know what? Traffic is really bad in London! We did appreciate the fact that all the crosswalks were marked “LOOK LEFT”. or “LOOK RIGHT” I guess over the years, enough American Tourists had been run over to warrant posting the warnings. I thought that being the guy who got to paint “Look Left” on tens of thousand curbs would be pretty interesting. Well not really, but the title “Superintendent of Looking Left” or SLL sounded good.

Next stop was Westminster Abby, Parliament and Big Ben. The first thing Reva noticed was that there was no roundabout in front of Big Ben or Parliament. The movie European Vacation had made up the scene (or the roundabout had been removed) where Clark Griswald was driving around stuck in the roundabout “Hey look kids, there’s Big Ben, and there’s Parliament….again”. The line was long to get into Westminster Abby but it was going to be closed the following day, so we opted to wait and we were glad we did. The old church was impressive with its Gothic style and soaring ceilings. It was quite an honor to be buried inside the Abby, and it appear that a good portion of London had been buried there. This was as much a crypt as it was a church. Afterwards, we found the Big Bus and completed our tour around London and headed back to the hotel for happy hour.

The next day, we opted to take the underground to St Paul’s Cathedral first thing. This time we used a different entrance into the subway system which, since we failed to notice the elevator, required us to walk down 130 steps. When we got to the bottom, Reva exclaimed “yuck”. I turned around to see her staring at her hand. Obviously, these stairs weren’t used and never cleaned. Both of our hands were completely black from the railing. When I say completely black, they were as black as anything you could imagine. Luckily we had some paper towels and we could get them clean …. at least to a disgusting gray. The ride to St Paul’s only took about 15 minutes and were there just in time to find out that it was closed for a funeral. Oh well, back to the underground and off to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. London has many fabulous museums and most of them are free to the public. The National Gallery was in a beautiful building and holds many famous pieces of Artwork. It was fun to explore and we beat most of the crowds – free museums always have crowds.

From there, back to the underground and off to the Thames to see the Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern Art Museum. The Thames cuts through the heart of London and today we were going to explore it by boat. We got off the subway across the river from the London Eye. We walked across one of the many bridges and headed up the river toward London City. There are pleasant pedestrian walkways on both sides of the river and several pedestrian bridges. The river is alive with tour and commuter boats and we grabbed a ride on one of the tour boats and had a nice chat with the ticket salesman. Business was slow…it was a Tuesday….and he enjoyed telling us about some things we should see. “Do you know that we have the Mayflower here?” He smiled as he asked the question. “You know the boat the Pilgrims floated over to found you country?” Yes I responded, I hadn’t heard that it was here but it seemed to make sense. “Yeah, its down by the Cutty Shark. They took her apart and made her into a pub. You should definitely have a pint there….its quite lovely”. We smiled and said we would put it on our list.

We got off of the boat in front of the Globe Theatre; Shakespeare’s old stomping ground. Really not much to look at here ….very touristy. Next door however was the Tate Modern Art Museum one of the most famous art galleries in the world. It was comprised of two large impressive modern buildings standing on the banks of the Thames. Wow this is going to be cool, I thought. Wrong! The buildings were mostly empty space with random junk. Don’t get me wrong, there was a display or two that was beyond what a fifth grader could create…but not many. It was more of a junior high school art show (without many students) than a world famous art gallery. The room with the display of a restroom urinal in a glass case on its side was particularly amusing. That was the only thing in the room. If there wasn’t a plaque with the Artist’s name, I would have thought I had wondered into a storage area.

From the Tate, we walked down the river bank looking for some fish and chips and to maybe take a ride on the London Eye, Ferris wheel. About the time we got near the Eye and our Fish and Chips, a Thunder Storm rolled through London. We took refuge under a bridge, unfortunately the bridge was more of a sieve than a shelter and we were getting wet. Fortunately, the storm passed quickly, but more were coming. We decided to pass on the Eye … too expensive with too many tourists for a Ferris Wheel just slightly larger than the one in Orlando. Also, with the lightning flashing around, it seemed like a poor idea. We did grab an order of fish and chips from the stand under the eye, which were expensive … $12, but exceptionally good. One order was more than enough for both of us.

Since the weather was getting questionable, we decided to jump on the Uber Boats and take a ride all the way up the Thames to see London from the water. It was a good, dry choice and a pleasant way to spend a few hours. Afterwards, the rain had stopped (three thunderstorms with hail) and we walked along the Thames for a bit before we headed back to the hotel and our happy hour.

The next day before heading to the Airport and our next adventure we took a stroll to Abby Road to see where the Beatles famously walked across the street and into history. Abby Road was only 1 mile from the hotel and we had an afternoon flight. Turns out, no one has made this into a tourist spot, at least yet. When we got to the famous crosswalk, there was one other couple who had made the journey to get the famous photo shoot. When the traffic slowed down, we walked across the street a couple times and headed back to the hotel and then to Victoria Train Station and Gatwick Airport. On the way I thought of all the famous songs made with London as a backdrop. Maybe next time we would walk down “Baker Street” and head over to “Electric Avenue”, but for now we had to take care of some unfinished business in Spain.

The flight from London to Bilbao Spain was only two hours and we arrived in the early evening. I had reserved a rental car but unfortunately, the car was downtown, not at the airport. Our hotel was close to the Airport and had a free shuttle, so we opted to skip the car for the evening and just head to the Holiday Inn Express.

We had canceled our flight to Bilbao back in 2020, when the Pandemic forced us to flee home from Europe, so we had wanted to get there when we had an opportunity and this seemed like the perfect time. We had a few days before we were scheduled to meet Reva’s Brother and Sister-in-law in Barcelona. Bilbao is home to the Guggenheim Museum and a Hermitage along its coast was used as a filming location in HBO’s Game of Thrones series. The hotel was small, but modern and comfortable. Also, the area was pleasant to walk around, so we had a nice evening walk and found a car rental agency where we could get a car first thing in the morning.

After breakfast, we walked up to Record Go Rental Car. Which was only 10 minutes from the hotel. I had never heard of the company before, but the reviews were decent and the price was great. I was very impressed! We were given a new car, no hassle about declining the insurance and were on the road in less than 30 minutes.

Our plan was to drive to Gaztelugatxe (Yeah, I can’t pronounce it either) and hike the stone stairs across the bay to “Dragonstone” as named in Game of Thrones. Gaztelugatxe was about 30 minutes outside of the City along the Coast and the drive was easy and pleasant.

We arrived at the parking area about 9:00 and was only the second car in the lot. Unfortunately, a sign was posted that said the hike was closed for the week for construction. We have had a lot of that on this trip, but no worries, we decided to hike as far as we could. The view of the stone steps crossing the bay and going up the rock cliffs was spectacular. Unfortunately, we came across a chain-link fence blocking the trail before we could even get to the shore, but the views from the rocks were great and we opted to drive down the road a little further and do some hiking.

Next we headed off to explore Bilbao and the Guttenheim museum, which was our real reason for traveling to the north of Spain. Bilbao is the 5^th largest city in Spain (who would have guessed) and has a large river flowing through the City. With medieval streets, parks and museums; this really was a great city to explore.

The Guggenheim Museum is a true marvel. It looked like a space ship that had crashed into earth and developed cancer. With a giant spider on one side and a huge puppy made out of flowers on the other, it was everything we anticipated and more. Forget the Tate Modern….this was real modern. Here technology meets art and design is everything. From huge steel panels made into concentric circles and designs, to Flowers made by Jeff Koons, this modern museum was fun!

The building itself was a marvel to explore and the current exposition dealt with the Art of Cars. From the first car designs, to experimental cars up to modern vehicle designs and even the world’s fastest race car, this place was fun, fun, ….. fun. Definitely worth a trip.

Prior to returning the car, we found a grocery store to stock up on our essentials; wine, fresh bread, some meet, cheese and olives. Our typical Spanish dinner to enjoy back at the hotel. The next day, we were to head to Barcelona and the next part of our adventure. We were glad to be back in Spain …. kind of our European home and where we would board Royal Caribbean’s Wonder of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world! For the next leg of our European adventure.