Tag Archives | Nordhavn 52

Lloyd’s of London is not an insurance company. Rather, it is an insurance market founded in the 1600s when Edward Lloyd began renting out space in his coffee shop to marine underwriters. Lloyd’s current headquarters is a masterpiece of modern architecture built in the Bowellism style, where interior space is maximized by placing the building…

Sky Garden is a public space at the top of the “Walkie Talkie” with a fabulous 360-degree views of London and the Thames. Several restaurants and a bar also are within—we had a memorable dinner at the Darwin Brasserie, the room jutting out from the left above the gardens in the picture above. Below are…

The HMS Belfast was launched in 1938 and saw action in World War II, including firing some of the first shots on D-Day. The ship also was part of the United Nations naval forces during the Korean War. In 1971, the retired ship was brought to London and moored along the Thames by Tower Bridge…

Tender selection on a small boat can be complex. Big tenders don’t fit and it’s more challenging to make multiple tenders work without giving up prohibitive amounts of deck space. Finding the “just right” compromise can be challenging. Back in 2009, we bought an AB 12VST and have used it for the intervening 9 years….

Stratford City, on the outskirts of London, has seen some some major construction in the current millenium. The city played host to the 2012 summer Olympics one year after the opening of Westfield Stratford city, the third largest shopping mall in the UK and one of the largest in Europe. We’d built up a big…

The most well-known portion of the Changing of the Guard ceremony takes place on the Buckingham Palace grounds. But this is just the middle part of the ceremony, and the hardest to watch due to the crowds that form well in advance. Better views can be had of the guards marching to and from St….

In mid-February we took the high-speed train from London through the Channel Tunnel for a 2-night trip to Paris. It seems kind of amazing that we could get up in the morning, do some work on the boat in London and later have lunch by the Eiffel Tower, all without leaving the ground. This was…

The famed Royal Observatory in Greenwich is the location of the Prime Meridian and the origin of “Greenwich Mean Time”. The observatory has an excellent museum detailing the search for an accurate means of calculating longitude at sea, plus sweeping views from its hilltop perch. Other Greenwich attractions include the old Royal Naval College grounds,…

We’d always thought the Tower of London was just that, a tower. But it’s actually a castle, with 22 towers in total, that was the royal residence for England’s medieval monarchs and also is where the Crown Jewels are currently kept. The complex is right next to St. Katharine Docks where we are moored, so…

London is a world-class city with modern architecture, a world financial center, and easy-to-see history going back more than two thousand years. We got a taste of it all on a clear day shortly after arriving into St. Katharine Docks. We started with the fabulous views from The Shard, completed in 2012, and stepped back…