Abbey Road

It was our last day in London and we had one last site to visit. We got up very early and went to the tube station as soon as they were open for business. We rode the train for a bit and eventually popped up at the St John’s Wood station. Once topside we found the “Beatles Coffee Shop” nearby, purchased some coffee and picked up a map to THE CROSSWALK!


It was a cool crisp morning and very few people were out at this time of the day. We followed the map and soon found the crosswalk. Being a huge Beatles fan, this was an amazing sight to behold. The neighborhood felt very residential and somewhat upscale. Actually looked like a nice place to live. We had been monitoring the Abbey Road webcam for a few months and soon found its location.

This is a shot standing under the webcam.


Annette took this picture roughly duplicating the webcam view.


The famous Abbey Road Studios has a low white wall in front that was covered with fan’s autographs and comments. It appears they often repaint the wall when it gets full of writings, as the paint looked awfully thick. Unfortunately, we didn't get a good picture of the wall.


Naturally, being a good tourists and Beatles fans, we had to duplicate the famous album cover to the best of our abilities. The Nikon has a mode where it will take shots as long as the shutter button is held. This would have been ideal, but unfortunately, we were still camera-challenged at this point and only had the disposables and the Blackberries. While dodging cars (with drivers who are probably tired of tourists doing this), I made the crossing several times while Annette ran out in the street and took pictures. I had hoped to cut and paste four shots together, but could only get two to reasonably line up.



Afterward, we stopped back at the coffee shop where we picked up a few souvenirs; including a large authentic-looking Abbey Road street sign. Later in the morning the shops in London began to open. We looked through the phonebook and found a Nikon dealer just around the corner from the hotel. They couldn’t do repairs on-site of course, but did have cameras available, so we bought a model one step down from our original. The original was used as a spare battery charger for the remainder of the trip.

After packing up and checking out of the hotel, it was off to Euston station and on to Liverpool.