Europe Part III- London

Hello everyone! I’ve been pretty busy with fun summer stuff so I haven’t written in a while, but here is the first part of the London leg of our vacation!

Day 1:

We arrived in London at about 11am on April 9th, and as much as we tried to sleep on the plane, we didn’t get much so we were pretty exhausted. Thankfully I had booked a hotel transfer when I booked our trip through Expedia, so that was very helpful because we didn’t have to think much. We picked up our luggage, went through customs (we didn’t have anything to claim so that didn’t take long), found our driver and we were at our hotel by about noon. We checked in and received a very helpful map from the hotel and went to our room where we proceeded to pass out for about 2 hours! When we woke up, we were fairly rested and ready to take on this new adventure.

The concierge recommended getting an Oyster card for the underground transportation, or the Tube. This card cost $5 and then you put whatever increment of money you want onto it. There were machines in the station that you just swiped your credit card and it printed out your oyster card. The tube was very easy to navigate, it was a little scary at first, but literally after the first ride we had the hang of it. There are maps all over the place so you just get on the corresponding line and make sure it’s going the right direction and you’re ready to go!

Gloucester Road Tube Station

We took the tube from the Gloucester Road stop, which was right across the street from our hotel, to the Westminster stop. When we got to the top of the stairs of the tube station, my breath was taken away. It was like the London you see in the movies, you look up and there’s Big Ben, you look to your left and there’s the London Eye, to the right is Westminster Abbey. It was amazing, I was in total awe.

The view walking out of the Westminster Tube

We walked around a little bit but we were pretty hungry, so we found a little Italian food restaurant, it was pretty good but nothing memorable. We then walked by the Eye and back towards Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, we walked all around taking photos and just taking it all in.

Westminster Abbey

We then decided to walk towards Buckingham palace, which was about a 10 minute walk through St. James Park. Buckingham Palace and the park were both gorgeous, why can’t we have stuff like that in Texas??

Then we decided we would just walk back to our hotel, well that was a mistake, as it was much further than we thought and we also got a little lost, but eventually we found a tube station and were returned back to our hotel in one piece! It was fairly early but we were so tired we didn’t care and went to bed, we wanted to be rested for the next day.

Day 2:

We started the day at a little cafe right near our hotel, Cafe Forum, I ordered a hot chocolate and you got a croissant for free! And let me tell ya, it was an absolutely amazing croissant! Notice there’s no picture of it, because it was practically inhaled moments after it was sat at our table. I ordered a bacon baguette, because I didn’t know you got a croissant, which was delicious as well. We planned our itinerary for the day as we knew we were going to have a very full day.

First stop was back to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard. We got there about 20 minutes early, which was not nearly enough. We pretty much saw nothing, we had our trusty selfie stick so with that raised up we got a few pics but it was mostly a claustrophobic mess. Literally thousands of people, it was insane. Then we walked/ran to the London Eye, we couldn’t get out of there quick enough!

The London Eye is a huge ferris wheel with giant pods instead of carts. They fit around 30 people and it takes a full 30 minutes for the wheel to make one rotation. Your ticket includes a 4D movie which was geared more towards kids but was still pretty cool for the adults.

We didn’t pay the extra for the fast pass tickets but we still only waited in line maybe 30-40 minutes, the line looked much worse than it was. The pods are so big and also enclosed so if you have someone afraid of heights like I did, it was perfectly fine, it really didn’t feel like you were even moving because it goes so slow.

It was an incredible experience and a great way to kick off our first official full day in London.

We then took the Tube to the Borough stop to go to the Borough Market. Wow this place was incredible. It was an open air market where vendors sold bread, meat, seafood, juices, microbrews, homemade wine, flowers, fruits, veggies and so much more!

Lenton and I basically walked around for an hour in awe, wishing we had places like this in Texas. I got some delicious pomegranate-apple fresh squeezed juice and it was amazing. Lenton wanted to try a kangaroo burger but I just couldn’t handle that lol. So we settled on a beef kabob to share.

We then decided we would walk to St. Paul’s Cathedral and hit up a couple sites on the way. First was the Southwark Cathedral which was right next to the market, gorgeous old church, but I can’t tell you much else!

We walked onto the London Bridge, not very eventful or beautiful, pretty ugly old bridge as a matter of fact lol, but we could see Tower Bridge from there so that was worth it.

We also walked past the recreated Shakespeare’s Globe, but I think we should have walked around to see the prettier part because I’ve seen pictures of it that look much different, oh well, we’ll just have to go back!

Then finally we were at Millennium Bridge, this is a walking bridge that takes you across the River Thames and leads you directly to St. Paul’s. The view was pretty spectacular.

St. Paul’s was gorgeous, but who wouldn’t think it would be? So many details in the architecture, it just boggles your mind that somebody carved all of that out by hand! We didn’t do a tour of it, which probably would have been really cool, but it was already 6pm and I think they stopped earlier in the afternoon.

Last off for the day was Notting Hill, so worth the tube ride! We walked down Portobello Road, which is where their market happens but they were already closed down for the day, so get there early. If I ever get to go back I will definitely make that happen! The houses are amazing, painted all different fun colors and there are lots of boutiques and art.

We got to see the shop that inspired the travel book shop in the movie Notting Hill, which has always been a fav. Apparently the door to Hugh Grant’s character can also be seen, but I didn’t look it up before and didn’t have wifi to google it 🙁

It was just a very beautiful and inspiring location and I highly recommend seeing it, it’s kind of out of the way but so worth it!

Completely exhausted by this point, we took the tube back to the hotel and relaxed for a few minutes. This was about the time Lenton was cursing me and telling me he was never going on vacation with me again, apparently I wore him out. I don’t know what he was complaining about, we only walked 8 miles according to my Fitbit lol. I told him we didn’t come 5,000 miles to relax! Then we grabbed jackets, dropped our bags and headed out to dinner. We ate at Wildwood, it was very close to our hotel, not great service but my Carbonara was excellent. We headed back to the room and slept well.