Thames Festival 2009
September 21, 2009 at 7:59 pm | In General, London, Out and About, Tourism, Travel, UK | Leave a CommentTags: London, review, Southwark, Thames Festival, Tourism, Tower Bridge, Travel, UK, Westminster Bridge
If you were visiting the Southbank of the River Thames over 12 – 13 September you may have been struck by the massive crowds that were wandering around for the annual Lord Mayor’s Thames Festival. Perfect blue skies and warm weather no doubt bolstered the numbers when I visited on Saturday. Sadly, I’d forgotten my camera so I’ll have to rely on my writing skills to paint a vivid picture.
Mmm that could pose a problem.
From Tower Bridge to Westminster Bridge there were numerous stalls with food, drink and random knick knacks etc for the discerning buyer, I mean tourist, to purchase. For the most part the food was quite diverse with Ethopian dishes alongside German sausage and strawberries and cream. Most stalls or variants thereof, were duplicated along the stretch of the walk.
Other than eating and more eating what was there to do? Not a lot during the day and even the eating wasn’t much of a draw.
On the Tower Bridge side there were some exhibits covering the environment, health and well-being of the river as well as a Korean display (cooking when we went past). Southwark bridge offered a unique eating experience – if you could push your way through the crowds – with the opportunity to eat on communal tables lining the bridge.
One particularly interesting event was the Flood Tide musical act, where sensors in the river were translated into notations for the assembled musicians and singers to perform. Quite chill and relaxing.
Night time may have offered a wider range of events with fire gardens, fireworks and parades but throughout the day it was a nice enough walk. That is as long as you’re ok with crowds and don’t suffer pedestrian rage. Just be prepared to take a few hours to get from A to B.
Will I go next year? Probably not but I may try and watch some of the evening events.
No Comments Yet »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
-
Flickr Photos
More Photos
Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.
