Featured Destination: Robert Pattinson's Hometown of London, England

We’re starting something special here at The Twilight Sisterhood by featuring geographic location posts. These locations are important to us as they will sometimes be places that our incredible readers hail from or be where those integral to the Twilight Saga hail from. It all began when I wrote a blog Welcoming readers from all around the world last month. When we got a reply from New Zealand, we gave them a shout out. Realizing we wanted to continue recognizing our faithful followers we decided to make it a regular segment. So please, enjoy the tidbits of new and different locales. And be sure to let us know you’re with us and where it is that you hail from….you may just inspire our next featured location.

To kick things off, we’re headed to jolly old England or more specifically, London.

City of London with the Houses of Parliament & the infamous clock tower housing Big Ben (bell) in the foreground.

Although people have been living in the marshy forests of the area for more than 5,000 years, it wasn’t until the Romans settled around 50 A.D. that London came to be, originally known as Londinium.

Today, this capital city of England and the United Kingdom is home to nearly 7.5 million people making it one of the largest cities in the world. With London encompassing only just over 620 square miles the population is very dense with approximately 11,500 people in each of those square miles.

It is also one of the most diverse locations in the world with Londoners speaking over 300 different languages and over 30% of its residents having been born outside of England.

Across the Westminster Bridge from Parliament is The London Eye, the largest Ferris or Observation Wheel in Europe.

Britain is currently on British Summer Time (Daylight Savings) which has them on Greenwich Mean Time + 1 hour. Because their dates do not coincide with ours here in the states, there is approximately a week in the Spring when they are 6 hours different from New York and 4 hours different in the Fall.

The legal drinking age is 18 with kids as young as 16 allowed in pubs without an adult. They recently changed the old standard 11 pm “last call” to “not at all”. In 2005, they went to 24 hour liquor sales and it’s up to the individual establishment as to whether they want to close or be open all day and all night. Penalties are stiff, however, for drinking and driving, so be sure to utilize one of many alternate modes of transportation available in London. As of July 1, 2007, England also banned smoking in all indoor public places such as pubs and restaurants.

Some of the more famous people to hail from London are William Shakespeare, Sir Isaac Newton, John Lennon, J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling and our favorite fictional character Dr. Carlisle Cullen. However, I feel that the greatest of all to come out of England arrived on May 13, 1986. This was the day that an adorable toe-headed little boy by the name of Robert Pattinson first unleashed his magic and charm on the world. So…thanks, Rob, for inspiring our first true geographic post.

Ahh...Rob makes a great Royal Guard. Don't you think?

In closing, I want to send a shout out to two visitors that stop by frequently. All we know is the first is from London and uses Carphone Warehouse Broadband Services for their internet and has visited us 61 times. The other being from Coulsdon, Surrey, and uses Tiscali UK Limited having visited us 23 times. I’m sure you know who you are and we’d love to hear from you. We’d also love to hear from all the other Britons that hang with us. Got another interesting fact about London to share with us or maybe you’re from a different location that we can feature in the future? Let’s talk…

Near the Thames-side Village of Barnes where Rob grew up.

Thanks to Greater London Authority, Frommers, Parliament, The London Eye & the Woodlands Junior School.