Seeing Sea Life London Aquarium and Strolling

Upon leaving the London Zoo after an extended morning there, I set out for Sea Life London Aquarium.

How often have you heard me be less than enthusiastic about an aquarium? I’ll give you a hint: Not often.

I remember a couple of aquariums that were quite piddling, with only a few small tanks. And I recall one large aquarium that didn’t have any jellyfish. If that’s not a criminal offence, it should be.

Apart from that, I’ve generally been very pleased with the aquariums I’ve visited around the world. Until today.

If you would find it disconcerting to see me indifferent, at best, about an aquarium, you might want to skip past the London Aquarium section of this post. After leaving the London Aquarium, I took a stroll, including through the wonderful St. James’s Park.

Sea Life London Aquarium

The aquarium’s full official name is SEA LIFE London Aquarium, but it is often called just London Aquarium. That’s what I’m going to call it. There are several other Sea Life aquariums around the world. I’ve been to a couple of them. The London version is just across the street from the bank of the Thames River, close to the London Eye.

I said in the introduction that I was less than thrilled with London Aquarium. My first complaint was the price. It cost me £39 to buy a same-day ticket at the ticket desk. It would have cost less if I had bought it online in advance. How much less depends on which day of the week and what time of day I bought it for. But that would have required more planning than I was willing to do.

For reference, at the current exchange rate, £39 translates to about $73.37 Canadian or $51.59 US.

The London Aquarium is a fair size. It’s not the largest I’ve been to. But it’s also far from the smallest.

The tanks are on two levels, with the largest extending up and viewable from both levels.

The fish and some reptiles they have were nice, but they had no spectacular examples. At most aquariums I’ve been to, there’s been at least one species of fish that I saw and said, usually to myself, “Wow! Would you look at that!” There weren’t any of those at the London Aquarium.

I found the twisty hallways winding through the aquarium a bit dark and uninviting.

On the plus side, the London Aquarium does have several jellyfish tanks. However, two of them had only two or three lonely specimens in each tank. And in one section, there was lighting in the room that probably wasn’t literally neon, but acted as if it were bright neon tubes.

That cast a glare and reflection on some of the tanks, making it difficult to clearly see and take pictures of the jellyfish. In the tanks where that was a problem, the lighting of the tank flowed through a series of colours, changing the hue of the translucent jellyfish. Some colours overpowered the neon-like lighting. If I was patient and waited for those colours, I could get a half-decent photo.

That said, as much as I like jellyfish, they weren’t the highlight for me. The London Aquarium has several penguins. They reside in a glass-fronted enclosure consisting of two rooms with somewhat different looks to them. There is no wall between the two rooms, so the penguins can waddle between the two. They did so rapidly.

In one of the rooms, there was a pool against the glass front. In the other, the penguins could stand quite close to the glass. Some of them did. This allowed them to get a closer look at the exhibit of humans on the other side of the glass from them.

Overall, I didn’t hate the London Aquarium. How can you hate fish? But I didn’t love it either. I particularly didn’t love it enough to justify the admission fee it charges.

More aquatic creatures at the London Aquarium:

A Stroll, and St. James’s Park

After I left the London Aquarium, I did some strolling in the area. (The aquarium is a relatively short walk from the Westminster district and from my hotel. Initially, my primary goal was to find a place where I could sit and have an espresso to drown my sorrow over being underwhelmed by the London Aquarium.

That wasn’t as easy as I would have thought. There aren’t a lot of simple cafés in the area that have tables. I think it’s probably a very high-rent district and the cafés likely want to minimize the space they lease.

However, wandering around that part of London is delightful. I walked across the Westminster Bridge over the Thames and past some grand and/or handsome stone buildings.

I eventually found a nice little café at one end of St. James Park. There, I sat with my cappuccino and a pastry. Eventually, because they turned out to be poor conversationalists, I drank my cappuccino and ate my pastry rather than just sitting with them.

I was also in St. James’s Park during my previous two visits to London. It’s lovely. There’s an excellent chance that I was there during the first of my four visits as well, but that was decades ago, and I don’t remember.

St. James Park is shaped like a pie slice if the person doing the slicing was a wee bit tipsy. It’s longer than it is wide, even at the widest part of the slice. The length of the park starts a few blocks away from Westminster Abbey and extends to a public square in front of Buckingham Palace.

The park contains lots of grass, flowers, and mature trees.

A pond runs almost the full length of the park.

That is to say, I’ve been calling it a pond. A sign I hadn’t seen, or don’t remember seeing (an important distinction), in my previous visits told me that it’s not a pond. It’s a canal.

The sign says, “About 350 years ago, workmen dug a canal in St James’s Park for the enjoyment of the fun-loving King Charles II. The King swam in the canal in summer and skated on the ice in winter. He spent many hours feeding his collection of water birds, which included a crane with a wooden leg. The Doge of Venice gave the King two gondolas to sail on his canal, and the Russian ambassador sent a pair of pelicans.”

So, it’s a canal, not a pond, is it? I challenge that. It’s not connected to any navigable waterways. It begins and ends in St. James’s Park. To me, that’s an artificial pond, not a canal. But it’s an official-looking sign, I think erected by the city. So, if they want to call it a canal, who am I to quibble?

A bridge crosses the pond canal about halfway along its length. I took pictures from it in both directions. I think you’ll agree it’s gorgeous.

This year, I wasn’t shocked by the squadron of pelicans in the park. When I was in St. James’s Park last year, I was. I was then certain they must have been new additions because I couldn’t remember having seen them when I was there a few years prior. And I was sure I wouldn’t forget seeing a squadron of pelicans in the middle of London.

That just goes to show that I should never be surprised by what I’m capable of forgetting. Last year, I looked at my journal entry from the prior visit and found that I talked about the pelicans then, too.

Last year, the squadron was grazing on the grass, oblivious to the nearby people.

Today, some of them were standing on a small rock island in the pond. Others were swimming in the pond canal. A couple of the ones on the island briefly performed a strange behaviour. They flapped their wings vigorously for a while, but stayed perfectly grounded.

I thought this was weird and tried to capture a video, but as soon as I got my phone out, they stopped. I think they were embarrassed. I imagined one of them saying to the rest of the squadron, “Hey, guys. I thought we could fly. Damn. I was sure we could fly. What’s up with this?”

I waited a while. One of the pelicans, but only one, on the island repeated the behaviour. I caught it on video.

Pelicans aren’t the only waterfowl to reside in St. James’s Park. There are also swans, ducks, and geese. (There are also lots of pigeons.)

The geese are incredibly accepting and unafraid of humans. I sat on a bench for a while. One walked right up to the bench near the end I was sitting on. I took the accompanying picture of a goose without using the zoom on my phone’s camera.

St. James’s Park is a beautiful place to unwind in the midst of London’s Westminster and Buckingham Palace district.

After spending some time in the park, I strolled back to my hotel.

I head back home tomorrow. But my flight isn’t until after 5:00 in the evening. So, despite it taking more than an hour to get to Heathrow Airport, I’ll have time in the morning to get up to something then. Hence, I’ll post one more entry from this trip. I’ll try to finish it and post it from the airport, but if I miss that deadline, I’ll post it from home or, if I splurge on Wi-Fi, from the plane. See you then.

Some buildings I passed during my stroll: