London, England (June 10-13)

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Okay, I've got a little catching up to do since I've been in two countries in Europe already.
I flew into London on June 10 and spend my two full days there just exploring central London. There are tons of historical buildings and monuments and squares to see, so a few more days would have been nice, but London is a little too rich for this guy. London has a great underground system so I took the tube to get around. I kept looking the wrong way when I was crossing the street and I almost stepped in front of a few cars. These cars are so small that they probably wouldn't hurt me anyway ;). Anyway, some of the major sites that I saw:

House of representatives
Big Ben
Horse Guards
St. Paul's Park
London Bridge
Tower of London
Tower Bridge
The Monument
The River Thames
Some old cathedrals

The Tower of London was pretty interesting because it's a medieval fortress right beside the Thames River and still contains all kinds of artifacts and displays of what it was like back in the day, with medieval weapons, the crown jewels, suits of armour, torture devices, ancient toilets (I think they're called gardeniers), etc.

I also spent an evening in a pub just to see what it's like in a real English pub. The first one I went into I had to leave because it was so smoky I could hardly breath. So then I found another pub called the Duke of Hamilton which was tolerable. It wasn't much different except that there were more older men than young people, and you don't have to tip.

My hostel was located north of central London (Hampstead Heath) in a pretty nice neighbourhood that seems to be predominantly Russian and orthodox Jew. There were tons of school groups in my hostel from England and other countries and there weren't too many backpackers there. I hung out a bit with one guy in my room who also happens to be a Canadian geology graduate from Windsor, Ontario.

Sorry, I can't post pictures yet so that'll have to wait. Next up...Amsterdam.

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