UK2026: Day 11: We Smell of Pubs

Location: London

Lovely long sleep in our hotel bed last night. We enjoyed the complimentary croissant and coffee for breakfast and then hit the road walking. Our goal today was a self guided walking tour of things in the area.

Mission one was to go see the new Globe Theatre and the site of the original Globe Theatre. We had no desire to actually watch the current play at the new Globe (Midsummer Night’s Dream). Those were pretty cool things to see and bonus they were only 10 minutes from our hotel.

Along the way we stopped at the Ferryman’s Bench. It’s neat to imagine that Shakespeare actually stood near the original location of this bench.

We also passed the Clink Prison Museum, the Golden Hinde Museum, Winchester Palace, site of the original Rose Theatre and the Crossbones Graveyard.

All of that in one relatively short walk. We weren’t done yet and it wasn’t yet 11:00. We headed over to the George. Not The George, just the George. George dates back to the 1600s and still stands after it was rebuilt in 1676. George is a pub. It is mentioned in one of Charles Dickens’ books. But wait, before we got to George we stopped at the site of the Tabard Inn which was mentioned in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

I’ll get to the George soon. We did stop at the Borough Market to get acclimatized and pick up a few treats for later.

At the George we ordered a few half pints and sat inside the main bar then toured over to the Parliament room, one of the oldest parts of the pub. Was a lovely pint in a really old setting.

We needed some lunch so we headed back to the Borough Market to get some lunch things. We ate whilst resting a bit in our hotel room. Food was good. One of the items was a Scotch Egg. We had only eaten out once in Scotland and that was for fish and chips. We had denied ourselves Scotch Eggs in Scotland!

Time to cross the Thames and head over to the Tower of London.

We stopped at the Tower Hill Scaffold Site where many people were put to death outside the Tower of London.

We had a look at the section of the old Roman wall. Amazing that the older short section is from 200 AD and the taller section is from the 600AD period.

It was now time to head back across the Thames by way of the Tower Bridge. But wait, a dude selling fresh candied peanuts out of a little cart. I’ll take some! They were good.

Peanuts and the Tower of London from the Tower Bridge

Here are a bunch of shots from the walk across the Tower Bridge.

Nice walk, so many sites to see but am I feeling thirsty? When in London, do what the locals do. It’s mid afternoon, let’s get a pint. We took a wandering route back towards our hotel seeking some other truly old pub to try. Hmmm. Back to the George! We had another half pint and sat for some of it in the Parliament room. The Parliament room features their Parliament clock. There’s a whole story of how the king taxed clocks and watches but pubs and some other buildings had communal clocks tax free by an act of parliament.

Surely we must be done. Well, it’s close, let’s head back via the Borough Market. I will not discuss what we got this time but I may have erased my entire calorie deficit from the last 10 days today. At least we won’t need dinner.

At least we won’t need dinner. Oops. Picked up a pizza from the tiny little pizza place (Spizza) near the hotel. Must say, it was really good and not too heavy.

Went out for a nighttime walk to see some lights and observe London at night. I still have “A Clockwork Orange” in my brain and the Jam song “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight” which makes me a bit skittish about London at night. Anyway, it was pretty and nobody killed me. I snapped a few photos from London Bridge.