First Days in London

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We arrived in London at 4:45am and it was dark and chilly. In a haze (well I was anyway) we collected our luggage and figured out what train we needed to catch to get in London and head towards our hotel.
It was really strange when we emerged from the underground tube as it was still dark and we were in Notting Hill wandering around looking for our hotel. We found it in Pembridge Square which is surrounded by beautiful white English buildings. It was too early to check in to our room, so we left our luggage and headed down the road to MacDonalds for Breakfast (nothing else was open!!).
After breakfast we decided to catch the tube into central London. It was getting lighter now, but instead of the nice morning sun we used to get in Australia, it was all dark, like it was twilight, and it felt like nighttime instead of the morning.
We arrived in central London and walked up a street and ended up right in Trafalger Square!!! It was amazing and didn't feel real. We took pictures of the monuments and headed down the street when it began to snow! At first it was tiny balls of white, and then as it got heavier the snow turned into flakes. We had to stand under a building and watch for a while (I didn't have a proper rain coat on), and Luke stood out in the snow so I could take a picture for you all!!(Check Photo's).
We headed back up the road and went inside the warm National Gallery. We wandered around for about an hour and a half looking at paintings from 1200's (mostly religous) to 1800's. Luke guided me around to a few famous ones by Raphael, Michalangelo, Monet, Van Goph, Da Vinci. It was cool, and would have been even better if I wasn't beginning to feel extremely tired and a little jet lagged!!
As soon as we headed outside again I woke up, the icy air is good at doing that!!! We decided to walk over to the London Eye and go for a ride. When we crossed the bridge over the River Thames to get to the other side we could see Big Ben and Westminster Abbey in the distance (check photos). The London Eye had a massive queue. There were people lining up everywhere to ride it so we decided to come back teh next day. Instead we walked back across the bridge to see Big Ben and West Minster Abbey.
We continued walking over to St James Park, and I was determined to see some Squirrels! On the way there we saw the Horse Guards and 10 Downing Street. We arrived at the park and I was worried that we wouldn't see any squirrels as someone had joked (Sue!!) that they were in hybernation. But we saw heaps of them! And they were putting on a display of collecting chestnuts and even paused to let me take photos of them.
We continued walking and arrived at Buckinham Palace. We were disappointed that we couldn't go up to the guards to have a photo (I think you can only do that at the changing of the guard). We took photos and sat down to decide what to do next, after all it was only about 1pm!
We headed back into central London and continued to Covent Garden. It was absolutely packed with people shopping at the Christmas Sales! I wanted to join them by realised I need to save my money. We got some food from Tesco's (Luke was fasinated by the selling of beer in the supermarket and at a cheap price!), and decided to head back to our hotel.
So we had a pretty long day and pretty much fell asleep at 5pm that night. Today we are going to go back to the London Eye, the Tower of London, London Bridge, back to Westminster Abbey (we didn't go inside yesterday), and who knows from there.
Still trying to get used to the darkness. It didn't get light until about 7:30am and it got dark at about 4pm (very strange!!). We haven't been too cold as our black Kathmandu jumpers are absolutely fantastic! We didn't even need to wear our thermals.
Anyway, gotta go! Miss you all already!
Lots of Love
Renee & Luke

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