Advertisement
Published: October 18th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Nomading My Way Through Londontown
I woke up early in London after a pretty good night's sleep. My roommate, Tatiana, from Canada, came in late the night before and we decided to try and hit up the Double Decker bus tour today to get the most out of our full day in London. Our first stop of the day was Buckingham Palace. Somehow from all the royal family hype in the U.S. I was really expecting this to be a gorgeous place. It was OK. The gates around it were the most "royal" looking thing about the building. We got there just in time to walk around before witnessing the changing of the guards. I'm sure most would have considered this great timing, but my main goal for Buckingham Palace was taking a picture with one of the British guards. Because we got their during changing time all of the guards were preoccupied doing thier job and none were able to stop and pose even though we even went to a special location to try and get the photo. That equals disappointing! Goal #1 - not happening. Oh well! We did stop and talk to several police officers along the way
though and they were all surprising nice and accomadating about helping us out- not to mention a couple were extremely good looking! Actually come to think of it, everyone that I talked to in London was very nice. The weather was cool, but sunny for the most part for us. The only storm was when we happened to be on the cruise on the Thames River headed for Tower Bridge and the Tower of London and luckily, that boat was covered. Another great thing about London- on the crosswalks it say "look left" or "look right" on the road. I think that saved me on more than one occasion from getting run over since I was used to looking in the opposite direction for oncoming traffic.
After some more touristy stops at Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and a stop for a "must-have" photo in the red phone booths, Tatiana and I decided to try and catch the blue line bus to go eat at Harrod's and try and see Kensington Palace. We couldn't find the blue line bus stop, but we did eventually find Harrod's- a cool store, but entirely to expensive. So, we decided to walk to Kensington
St. to walk to a different bus stop to get to the Palace. We found it, but it had been rerouted due to construction. We went to the new stop. Then we saw the bus stop at the OLD stop! We decided to walk to the next stop. Let's just say the maps were NOT to scale! We thought we were lost at least a million times and stopped to check where we were at several bus route maps, but we couldn't really gauge where we were. I couldn't understand why the maps didn't have a "You are Here" arrow! Honestly! At this point we really needed to get back because we both had our pre-tour meetings in about 2 hours and we had NO idea where we were and how long it would take to get back. Finally a RED line bus came and we explained our dilema to the bus driver and pleaded with him to take us back to the proper place we needed to be. He was really cool and said he would drop us as close to Russell Square as possible. Apparently, all of the bus lines we out of whack due to an earlier
Red Phone Booths
Make sure you hold your nose if you try this! "suspect vehicle" in Piccadilly Circus and the fact that no one could drive through that area. Our driver was extremely talkative and tried to get us into "jungle techno" music (some sort of British techno) and even played some for us from his phone. (Yes, he was driving too.) God knows, I don't like techno so it wasn't my cup of tea. ( Little did I know that pretty much everywhere we went all you would hear was techno/house music---Nightmares!) Finally got back and ate some food at the London Pub. Fish and chips and some Strongbow. Yum! We each met up with our respective tour groups. I met Monique and Michelle ( 2 sisters from South Africa), and Courtney and Siobhan (California) that night, and a couple others. Later on that night I went out with Courtney and Siobhan for a couple of beers. Then went back to get ready for our departure, bright and early 6:45 a.m. for Amsterdam!
Noticings about London:
*London is much more multicultural than I had ever expected. Being blond haired and blue eyed I did feel like a minority. But, it honestly felt like a good thing.
*Guys wear really ugly shoes
here- from what I've seen.
*The lanscaping upkeep here is phenomenal. Everything is super green and doesn't look like a blade of grass is out of place.
*Public transportation is something to LOVE!
*When people hear your accent the judgement begins...but not always a bad thing.
*Police officers here are unordinarily nice.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.075s; Tpl: 0.008s; cc: 15; qc: 47; dbt: 0.034s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb