Day 5 in London: Westminster Abbey, bridge pics, graffiti tunnel, Abbey Road and… football!

Monday, March 24

Westminster Abbey

On Monday we had timed tickets for Westminster Abbey for 10:00, so it was a “slightly” earlier morning to get everyone up and ready and out the door. (In this season not necessarily essential to pre-book, but I saw conflicting reports and as we had other firm evening plans, I didn’t want to arrive and find a long wait or that we couldn’t get in until afternoon. Westminster was on my “must do” list, so I booked tickets a week or two before our trip.)

Took the tube (just 2 stops from our place) and arrived!

Got right in, got outfitted with our audio guides and set out to walk around.

It is an absolutely stunning building!! It is an Anglican Church and has been the site of every royal coronation since 1066.

It’s also the burial site of MANY famous people from history (both royals and other famous writers, poets, thinkers, etc.). *Apparently Westminster Abbey is now “full” for any future burials. That’s why most recent royals are being buried over at Windsor Castle instead.

This is just a beautiful place.

The high alter is where the coronations take place (currently covered for Lent). You can see the Coronation Chair in the photo where the King or Queen sits.

Some very old tombs:

King Henry III:

And King Henry V:

And sisters Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Mary I, buried here together, despite their very hostile and un-sisterly-like history. (Which, I won’t pretend to remember exactly (I was always pretty terrible at history in school), but I believe Mary was Catholic and Elizabeth Protestant, and basically, let’s just say, they had issues. 😅)

Did I mention this is just a gorgeous building?! So many nooks and crannies to explore. We spent a good couple hours here.

The large Poet’s Corner has burial sites of many, and memorials to even more, famous poets, writers and musicians.

C.S. Lewis:

Charles Dickens:

Ethan was excited to see a memorial to Charlotte Brontë, as he is currently reading Jane Eyre in English class! There’s also one for Shakespeare.

We had the add-on tickets for the Queen’s Jubilee Galleries upstairs. (Heading up many stairs- nice views of the Parliament building next door.)

Looking down from balcony on Westminster! Amazing.

I couldn’t take photos in the upstairs gallery, but it was cool! The Magna Carta was up there! And many other old relics.

Finally, headed back down. A couple final pics on the way out:

I liked this view from the outside + brilliant sunshine!! We have been SO lucky with amazing weather!! It has not rained once.

We already had a few Big Ben pics from other days, but the lighting was so nice with the blue skies here, so I made my family indulge me in more photos.

Iconic Sights photoshoot:

Next we walked across the Arch bridge… I wanted to see the Parliament building from across the way, to see it all stretched out.

Great photo op here!!

Graffiti Tunnel

Next we walked walked a couple blocks over to the Graffiti Tunnel. This suggestion was at first met with a little resistance from some who thought it sounded too far away (it was like, 5 minutes…), but in the end everyone agreed it was a very worthy, super cool stop! I had seen this on the map and had flagged it as a possible interest spot, but had bumped it up my list after Laura told me her kids had really enjoyed this place!

It’s a big tunnel where street art is legal! It is FULL of amazing art and graffiti. It’s an awesome place to just walk through and look.

At the far end, there was a guy painting. I struck up a brief conversation with him as we walked by (I was wondering- so many of the interior pieces were very elaborate and I was curious how it works… can you just go and paint over anything, at any time? Seems like some of the art would have taken a lot of effort to have someone come and scribble over! He said this far end was more open for just free painting and things get painted over quickly down here.)

Asher then asked him something, which then prompted the guy to hand Asher a can of paint and told him to paint something!

I think if Asher had had more time/space he would have made something cool (he’s really artistic!) but settled for mostly just writing his name.

The guy then showed him how to write his name in “graffiti style”. See above and below versions:

This was a great stop off and I’d highly recommend it!

Lunch at Brewdog Brewery

Right around the corner from the tunnel was a cool looking brewery. We love places like this and we were all hungry!

We had evening plans later, so this lunch served as our “downtime” for the day. It wasn’t too busy in there, we took our time, the boys played games on their phones and it was very nice.

Food was GOOD, too! I had a delicious burger.

After lunch, back to the tube station.

We had a bit of downtime here before bundling up again and heading out for our evening plans… an England National team football game! We had tickets for a 7:45 pm game at Wembley Stadium, a World Cup qualifier game, England vs Latvia. I had bought the tickets right when they went on sale, and I scored killer seats.

First though, on the way to the stadium (which is located a bit on the outskirts of London), we stopped off to see Abbey Road! It just happened to be on the same tube line as we needed for the stadium, so we were able to basically hop off, see Abbey Road, and then continue on to the stadium.

Abbey Road

Abbey Road is, as it says, just a road + crosswalk. Ha. It could really be just any old road. But, it’s THE Abbey Road, from the Beatles’ cover fame!

We all took turns crossing the road (minus Ethan, who does not enjoy being a spectacle and didn’t even know what Abbey Road was, anyway, lol), along with a big handful of other tourists, dodging cars who were probably rolling their eyes but also must be used to this by now.

Asher was game for a photo, though! (I showed them the Beatles cover and of course they know who the Beatles are.)

Ivan’s turn… I guess we’re going the wrong way, oops. I should have double checked the original pic! Everyone else was going this way, so we just joined in… lol. (It was hard to get that straight on shot like the Beatles without going in the middle of the road…)

My turn! 😆

Here’s the scene from a distance:

Abbey Road sign in the background:

Wembley Stadium

From Abbey Road, we got back on the tube… which was now PACKED heading toward Wembley Stadium. We barely all squeezed on, in different cars, and it was not the most pleasant ~20 minute ride while standing smushed between other people. Ha.

We made it, though, and exited the station to see the famous Wembley Stadium in front of us! Super cool!

It was crowded and a very exciting vibe in the air.

It was a bit of a hike around to our entrance and to our seats, but we had amazing seats!!

We were in row 17, I think the closest we’ve ever sat for a major sporting event.

It’s a big stadium, too! There were 79,500 people in attendance at the game!!!

Ivan was in heaven, since he loves all things soccer. Here’s me wearing his England sweatshirt! 😅 (We never managed to find a replacement for him before the game… oh well….).

The boys had a lot of fun, too, and they took a bunch of their own photos etc.

At half we went down right by the field for some pics:

England won 3-0! It was a good game, though, and Latvia hung in there pretty well for a long while.

My parents had fun, too! Even though they aren’t exactly “soccer fans”, they’ve watched enough of the boys’ soccer over the years to enjoy it. Plus just cool to be at a major stadium game.

After the game, it was a ZOO to get out!!!! Omg. The people!!! Everyone was headed to the underground station …. I was not sure how this would go!

The police/event staff had clearly done this before. They had a stoplight system in place to “hold” the crowds and let people go in waves. It actually didn’t take that long to get down the long way and to the station. Maybe 45 minutes?

The train platform! Yikes a lot of people!!

Fortunately, we “just” missed squeezing on one train, so we waited for the next- which meant we were first in line and first on when that one came shortly after. Which means… we got seats! It was a longer ride back from Zone 4 and was after 10:30 pm, so seats = good.

Finally got back to our apartment, and needed a late night snack, so my dad, Ivan and I went out at like 11:30 pm to buy frozen pizzas at a 24 hour Tesco! Lol! We all ate like a bunch of college kids at midnight before crashing in bed, LATE, on this night.

What a super fun, amazing day though! One of my favorites!