We Went to the UK: London

I'm only 4 months late in finishing the blog reports of my trip to England/Scotland. But here they come....

There will likely be 6, but I might drop a few other things in between. My goal for April is to catch the blog back up to writing about things that are currently happening. I'm not so sure what happened this winter, but blogging regularly was not one of them. With much to catch up, here goes England.

London to be specific.

After spending time with Rachael and Andy and baby Ava in Liverpool, Jessi and I headed off to London.

We took a cab, which was my second ever time in a cab, at a very early hour to catch the train. The trip from Liverpool to London was my first train experience ever in my life. (aside from things like the Cincinnati Zoo)

Our first adventure in London was finding our Hostel. I tried to book walking distance from the train station and it was a success, if you call a 30 minute walk walking distance, which we did. We dropped our bags in the luggage store room and went off to see the sites!

Having never been to London and having no personal tour guide, we decided that a tour bus company would be our best route. It turned out that we were right! We got our bus passes, with a second day free upgrade because we were visiting in non-peak season, and a river tour pass, and thus we were off to be educated about the historical and cultural things all around us.

Our stops for the day included:

- Kensington Gardens so that I could say hello to the statue of Peter Pan (my only must see)
If I lived in London I think I would like to spend much time in Hyde Park, it was a lovely area.

I want to live in this house!

- Then it was off to Buckingham Palace for tea with queen.
For some reason, they didn't have us on a the guest list so we just got to admire the gigantic building from the gate with the rest of the visitors. It really was impressively large.

The Palace

- Next on the list was Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and the London Eye.
They are all right along the river and an easy walk from place to place once you are close. The architecture and structure and design of each was impressive as to be expected.

Standing in front of Westminster.

- We then stopped for lunch and ate our only London fish and chips.
It was pretty tasty. I was most impressed with the malt vinegar in packets like ketchup. We need to get in on this.

Standing near the London Eye and our lunch place.

- After lunch we crossed the Tower Bridge and stopped to see the Tower of London.
In case you were wondering, the Tower of London isn't really all that tower like. It's more like a fort and the parts that are towers are not so towering comparatively to the buildings around them.

Tower Bridge and the Tower of London.

- We then boarded a river boat tour.
This was a very neat (and cold) way to see the city. Our guide was not a trained guide, rather just a member of the boat crew. He was precious.

View from the river boat.

- The German Christmas Festival was next on our list.
It was quite similar to the one in Liverpool and Edinburgh.

- Lastly we headed back to catch a bus to get us close to our hostel.
We rode down Fleet Street and headed for Piccadilly Circus to end our touring for the day. (It was not late, but it got dark about 5:00pm) Along the way we stopped at a giant M&M store, really the most M&Ms I have ever seen in one place; saw street performers break dancing; and stopped in some used book stores where they wouldn't let me see the oldest copies of Peter Pan.

- At the hostel we explored a little, but mostly wanted to get to bed early to start the day early to catch a few more sites before heading to Edinburgh.

- Next morning we hit a few more sites and the British Museum.
We saw the actual Rosetta Stone and Serpent Mound in Ohio was on a display in the museum. You could spend hours and maybe days and not see all the exhibits. We also went back toward Piccadilly so that we could see it in the day light.

The Roestta Stone

- Then it was back to the hostel to pick up our things and head to Kings Cross Station to catch the train to Edinburgh!

Overall, London was a pretty cool city. The new and old architecture all interwoven together was very interesting to me. I think I could go back and spend a little more time, but for the budget and time we had, I think we did it the best way we could. It only rained on us for about 20 minutes (the whole trip) which was very unusual considering the time of year. We actually had some sunny days too.

Next up, Edinburgh!