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Published: October 9th 2008
I got to take my third trip to London and Matt finally got to go for his first! We flew RyanAir (of course) which meant we arrived at London Stansted at 6:40am Friday morning, August 29th (Matt wasn’t thrilled about leaving for the airport here in Germany at 3:30 in the morning) but that meant that we arrived in downtown London by 9am and had the whole day ahead of us. We went to our hotel and, miracle of miracles, our room was ready early and they let us check in! We stayed at the Apollo Hotel, which is literally a block away from Kings Cross station and paid 60 pounds per night for the room, which included breakfast. For anyone not up on exchange rates, that’s $120 a night, and the breakfast will get you through practically until dinner! The room was very small with a double bed (a REAL double bed too, not two twin beds pushed together) and we shared a bathroom with another room. This wasn’t the Hilton by any stretch of the imagination but it was a great location and a good price for downtown London.
We bought Oyster Cards this trip, which I hadn’t
done before. The last two trips I bought the day pass for the Tube (London’s subway system) but decided to give the Oyster card a try this time. I’m hooked. The card is prepaid and it only takes a few minutes to get one so it’s nothing you need to order in advance. You touch it to the sensor on your way through the turnstile (so no feeding your ticket through and retrieving it at the end). It charges you a reduced rate for each trip but you’ll never pay more for each day of travel than what you would pay for a day pass. So, if you take lots of trips in one day it simply stops charging you once it reaches the day rate. Nifty, huh? It works on the subway, tram system, and the buses (and you HAVE to ride one of the red double decker buses if you go to London!). This is great if you’re not sure how much you’re actually going to use it because you don’t lose any money by purchasing a day pass that you might not need and it’s SO much more convenient! At the end of your trip you can
turn in the card and get back any money that you have left on it (as well as the 3 pound deposit you pay when you get the card). Very very worth it.
We had already made tentative plans with our friend Dan (many of you may remember British Dan from when we lived in Clarksville) and his girlfriend Anita (who will be called Neat from this point on). They live about an hour by train outside of the city and were planning on being in London anyways on Saturday. We checked in with them to let them know we had arrived and to start finalizing plans for the next night. We pretty much spent Friday walking around and getting our bearings and didn’t visit any of the big stuff. We stopped at my favorite place to eat breakfast…Pret-A-Manger!! That means “Ready to eat” by the way It’s a UK chain (keep your eyes open for them in NYC though) and they have all kinds of freshly-made sandwiches that are…you guessed it…ready to eat! Best of all, they use mostly free-range and organic ingredients so everything is extra good for you. I don’t think Matt was impressed but
I was in 7th heaven! We went to Buckingham Palace and took pictures of the guards and watched them change positions every 15 minutes or so (what a boring job that must be!) and walked through Green Park a little bit and took some pictures. I loved the pictures that Stacie and I took in Green Park during our trip but was excited to get some with the trees in bloom. We ate lunch in Chinatown, hoping that it would taste like Chinese food back home (no such luck) and went to see a movie…IN ENGLISH!! We visited Trafalgar Square, St. James Park, and went to Piccadilly Circus searching for a rugby ball (it should be no surprise that we found one lol). We ended up going back to the room to take a little nap and let me rest my back (I’m getting so old and decrepit lol) and then headed out to find something to eat for dinner.
We spent Friday night in Covent Garden, which was a lot fun. There were tons of tents and booths set up with just about any kind of food you could imagine and lots of stuff to buy. There were
also performers doing magic tricks, comedy shows, and stunts (and of course passing the hat after they were done) but it was a cheap night for us since paying for the entertainment was optional. I ended up having a chicken and vegetable pasty (sort of a combination of a pot pie and a turnover…minus the apples) and matt had a schnitzel sandwich. I had to laugh at this…we leave Germany for the weekend and he STILL eats schnitzel! After the entertainment started to die down we headed back to the hotel for the night.
Saturday was a gorgeous hot sunny day we went to the Tower of London (and actually paid to go in). Matt’s not big on investigating every place we come to…he’s more of a take-a-picture-of-the-outside-and-let’s-move-on kind of guy but I wanted to go in so he humored me. We got to see a really cool demonstration of medieval weaponry, like catapults and stuff, the place where they found the two bodies of what they believe are missing princes that were murdered, many of the jail cells, as well as living quarters, suits of armor, and lots of hand-held weapons. We also walked the grounds, which were
really beautiful. I had a great time and I think Matt even enjoyed himself We also took some great pictures of Tower Bridge (which only us Americans call London Bridge). There’s actually a really funny story that I heard about London Bridge. There IS a London Bridge, but it’s just a regular bridge, not at all pretty like Tower Bridge is. We (America) decided that we wanted it (Tower Bridge) and made the Brits an offer on London Bridge and it wasn’t until the bridge was delivered and reassembled in America that we realized we had bought the wrong one! All because we’re stubborn and persist on calling it the wrong thing. I don’t know how true that is but it makes for a fun story anyways.
We met up with Dan and Neat that evening and went to dinner at a dim sum restaurant near Tower Bridge. I’ve seen Dan a few times over the past couple years…once when he very first returned from Iraq before he moved back to England from Tennessee and again when I went to London for my solo trip over Memorial Day weekend, but Matt and Dan hadn’t seen each other in
almost 3 years and had a wonderful time catching up!
Sunday morning we had rain, which is actually very typical of London, so we spent the day doing indoor stuff. We went to the British National Museum and saw mummies and the Rosetta Stone and we also went to the British Library to see their display. They had lots of old Bibles and original editions of books and a really cool display on the Beatles which included the napkins and scraps of paper that they wrote their songs on. I got to see “Yesterday” and “Help” as they were originally written. It was really cool.
Since I’m writing this quite a bit after our trip, the last 24 hours of our stay in London has gotten a little mixed up in my mind. I can’t remember what we did when but I can tell you that we went to see Big Ben, Parliament, the London Eye, and Westminster Abbey and took pictures (I just couldn’t tell you what day we actually saw it all). We didn’t go in any of them and we had planned on riding the London Eye but decided it was way too much money
Tower Bridge at night
We took a lot of pictures of the bridge but I'm sure you can see why :)and settled for taking pictures. Matt’s not a big fan of ferris wheels anyways. We also took a nice walk through Hyde Park once the weather cleared. We sat by the lake and watched the people and geese…it was very relaxing.
Matt has decided that he likes Paris better…I’m the opposite (of course lol). Because I love British history so much London is such a treat for me. I get to see all of these fantastic places that I’ve only read about…isn’t that what travel is all about anyways?
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Terrica
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London Bridge
I heard that same story about the London Bridge purchase. I think it was from the tour guide while visiting London a couple of years ago. I never researched it, but I don't doubt it. :-)