Wellcome to London!: London in pictures vol.1

Last weekend was a Lazy Saturday. After one busy week before another busy week, inspired by the camera experiments for my son's school Art lessons, we spent the day looking at central London through the camera lens. Son learnt composition and (photo)shooting basics, I revived my long forgotten passion for amateur photography - the results of the trip are below.

The Queen's Walk

The Queen's Walk is a beautiful walkway on the banks of Thames river, passing numerous historical buildings and places and offering amazing views to the river and landmarks on the other side. We entered the walkway near Monument underground station and turned in the direction of St. Paul.

Morning view to the Twer Bridge

The bank, wide at the beginning, went narrow as we got closer to St. Paul's.
Have you ever been under the London Bridge? In case you are among those tourists who cannot distinguish London bridges aside from the very obvious Tower Bridge (and even it is often confused with the London Bridge), I suggest you dive (not literally though) under the bridge. You might find the truth there:

The Shard on top of the office building

The bank is full of both old victorian buildings and new modern structures, the latter, ironically, often being just a mirror for the old classics:

What is real and what is a reflection?

There are however some modern riverside architecture, that is worth a picture by itself, as if only from a very specific angle:

Vapiano

For lunch and some rest we went to Vapiano. There are three Vapiano restaurants in London, all located in the center: Great Portland Street, Soho and Bankside. We used to visit the one on Great Portland Street. Although tasty as usual, the overall experience was unpleasant. Saturday afternoon the place was packed. No available tables, long queues to order and get the food, very noisy, it was hard to actually make staff understand what it is that we wanted, not even mentioning some exceptions to the menu. We spent about 15 minutes wandering between tables on both first and second floors and tea with dessert was not at all relaxing in this atmosphere.

In contrast Vapiano Bankside was amazingly quiet and roomy : high ceilings, lots of space between tables, glass floor to ceiling windows, the building itself was in a quiet residential area with the majority of customers - families with small kids. There were no queues whatsoever, I was able to order a tricky combination of pasta and meat and chatted with the guy cooking it. We took 3 small tables and the sofa and stretched our legs after a long walk. On our way out I chatted with the cashier and she recommended to try also the Soho restaurant for its beautiful design. Yet to see that one.

The area where the restaurant is situated is obviously very biker-friendly. You can pump your tyres and even make minor adjustments/make minor fixes if needed:

When the living room is scarce, people use all available means to extend it.

Restaurant windows were decorated with names of cities where Vapiano is present. We were happy to see Tallinn and Vilnius present as well as giants like Washington and Taipei.

Full and rested we set out to look at St. Paul both from below ...

...and well advertised terrace on top of One New Change shopping center. To be honest, my expectations were too high for this place. The promotional picture is well done and attracting. The reality looks like this:

I wouldn't call it "spectacular views of the London skyline from our breathtaking public roof terrace".

It's just another view from the 6th floor level.

Canary Wharf

Next stop planned was Canary Wharf - the all-new-modern business district of London. It has always fascinated me with the elegant combination of concrete, glass and water producing a neat and beautiful look and feel. With the little bays around every corner it looks like the business City floats on water. Kind of business-Venice.

The vicinity has a collection of beautiful and original restaurants - spacious, both modern and old-style.

There is a special symmetry to the buildings and roads and walks, with interesting sculptures telling their story. Walking there feels like you are walking in an absolutely different world, another planet compared to old-central London.