2022 - August - London - Thames walk

If you don't want to miss the most important sights in London, we recommend taking a walk along the Thames. Like a string of pearls, one highlight follows another here. However, apart from a few hotspots, you won't be overwhelmed by crowds of tourists. Instead, you can stroll along the streets wonderfully.

We started our tour right after visiting the Sky Garden and walked from there to Tower Bridge. Crossing this bridge is almost a must. Because even though we already know it from English class, it is always impressive to walk on it in person.

On the south side of the river, you will recently encounter many chimpanzees. These 28 bronze sculptures are called 'Chimps Are Family' and are located between Tower Bridge and London Bridge. They depict various behaviors of the monkeys, with whom we share 98% of our DNA and therefore can be called our family.

After this animal rendezvous, your view will surely widen to the surroundings. From here, you can see the Tower of London on the other side of the river, followed by the many modern office buildings.

Meanwhile, right at the pier on your running side, you will come across the HMS Belfast. This old warship is now a museum and can be visited.

But no matter where you are on your Thames walk, you will always discover a truly distinctive and pointed building between the buildings: The Shard. The 310-meter-high skyscraper was even the tallest building in Europe for a few months in 2012. It's no wonder that it is well seen.

I promised you a riverside path along the Thames, and yet you will occasionally find that it does not lead continuously along the river. But small detours are rewarded. For example, we discovered the Borough Market. Google lists it as a 'fresh food store', which somehow sounds smaller than it actually is. In fact, it is a really big market that is located (!) under a railway bridge.

But soon you will return to the riverbank, and you can soon discover another very famous piece of London: The Millennium Bridge with a view of St. Paul's Cathedral on one side and the Tate Gallery on the other. And of course, the fans of the Harry Potter movies will know, this is the bridge that was destroyed by the Death Eaters. Fortunately, it was only a movie.

By the way, there is another Harry Potter filming location that you can visit: Leadenhall Market. This beautiful shopping passage was already seen as Diagon Alley in the film.

We are now approaching a highlight of our walk, at least in terms of the flow of tourists. In fact, there are so many people at the London Eye that many street artists also perform here, and they, in turn, warn against pickpockets due to the crowds.

So it's up to you whether you want to join the queues for the London Eye, I didn't want to.

But the neighborhood here is particularly beautiful. The House of Parliament and Big Ben follow. Of course, you can also visit Westminster Abbey on this route.

Finally, on the other side of the river, there is the Covid Memorial Wall. Here, many hundreds of red hearts adorn the wall, but each one stands for a beloved person we have lost to COVID. No official authority has intervened here, but any individual can simply come with a pen and enter the data of the loved one.

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