Just a little bit of London

Now that I have been to London twice, I feel comfortable in saying there is very little left that I want to see.

Notice I said "very little", and not "nothing."

There are a few places that I wanted to hit up on this last trip that I wasn't able to work into my schedule. In one case, a place I wanted to see was closed to the public because it is an Olympic venue.

So, here are the things left that I haven't been able to see yet in London:

Hampton Court Palace
The Household Cavalry Museum (it was closed to the public because of the Olympics)
The Royal Observatory at Greenwich
The Palace at Westminster

I also would have liked to have seen the Olympic Stadium and London's Olympic Park, but access at the train station closest to the stadium and the park was limited to only those people who had a ticket to an event at the stadium. Well, that was not me and I had no intention of going to another train station and just walking a long distance to the stadium.

Basically these are not sights that alone (or even as a group) warrant making another trip to London from Atlanta. Maybe if I'm passing through Europe for an extended stay and I get a couple of days where I can make a side trip to London, I'd see those sites, but I can't see myself making a trip to just London for these places. Granted there are other places around England that I would love to visit, such as Hastings, Cardiff (OK, that's technically Wales), the White Cliffs of Dover and Oxford, so if packaged with those, I could see myself making another stop in London.

The reality, though, is that I have a lot of places in Europe that I still want to see.

I want to visit the Netherlands and Belgium.

I want to take a cruise down the Rhine and hike in the Alps (in springtime).

I want to go to Spain and run with the bulls in Pamplona (Hey, in my mind, I could survive that) and participate in La Tomatina in Bunol.

I want to look for the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland and chase the McGratty family history in Northern Ireland.

I even want to engage in an exercise in futility by trying to push straight the Leaning Tower of Pisa.