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Published: August 13th 2013
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Miss Kika (the black cat missing in action so far) suddenly appeared for breakfast today! She gave Chris a hiss, ate some grub, then took off again. At least we know she's okay but she doesn't stick around long enough for me to even grab a photo of her!
After our own breakfast we headed out for a day of sightseeing. We began at the off-sale/corner store to buy an Oyster card. This is like a cash card for the busses and subways. A 5 GBP deposit gets you a card (refundable when you're done with it) and we each put 20 GBP onto our cards. Your subway entrance and exit is quick and easy by tapping the card and the cost taken from it averages about half price so it is well worth getting this. You put on as much money on it as you like and refill it as needed
So we walked 10 minutes to Cambridge Heath train station, tapped our Oyster card to get in and then took a train to Liverpool Street station and transferred onto the tube to eventually get out (with what seemed to be at least a million other people squished
in there with us) at Leicester Square Station. We climbed up above ground to find ourselves in the middle of London. We walked a few blocks to Trafalgar Square to find the hop-on hop-off busses. We chose the "Original Tour" bus for 28 GBP each which includes the city hop-on and off tour, a boat tour on the Thames, and a Jack the Ripper walking tour. We also bought Tower of London entry tickets for 19.50 GBP each.
We managed to get a seat on the top of the open double decker bus which was great for better visibility and photos. The roadways seem incredibly convoluted to me and there are BEAUTIFUL OOOOOOLD buildings EVERYWHERE! The bus tour took us all around downtown and past Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, London Bridge and the Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, etc., etc. We hopped off after an hour or so, about 3 stops before the end, to do the Tower of London tour. We did this on our own without a guide which was quite easy. If you read up on it a bit first you really don't need anybody telling you all the details, slowing you down and costing
you yet another $20 GBP or so.
The highlight here is the Crown Jewels. Don't let the LOOOOOOONG lineup scare you away. It moves quickly and the one hour we were in line actually went by very fast and seeing the jewels, etc. was well worth the wait.
After this we met up with the Jack the Ripper guide, along with 50+ others, and walked around for 90 minutes from murder site to murder site and various points of interest connected to the story. The guide was really knowledgable and entertaining and we saw parts of London which we never would have walked through otherwise.
We met up with Garth & Sue after this in a nearby bar where they had made a new friend of a local Brit businessman who bought us all drinks. We then headed off for our Thames river cruise nearby and for 30 minutes enjoyed seeing everything from a different point of view. We certainly got our money's worth from this hop-on hop-off ticket.
We made our way back home around 7pm via the tube and train and Chris and Sue cooked up a stir-fry for supper. A really full and
fun day touring London. Tomorrow morning we're planning on heading back downtown to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace then probably a photo sightseeing adventure through the city.
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