The flights were cheap for a reason, we flew out Friday evening at 7:30pm and were flying home at 8am on Monday. But with how expensive London is, plus the exchange rate which is even worse then the dollar to Euro rate, we were ok with only spending 2 full days there.
On Friday afternoon I dropped the dogs off, and when Shanna came home from work, we took the train to the airport and met up with Adam & Penny. The flight was smooth, and at 8pm local time we touched down in London. The first thing I noticed when we got off the plane was how nice it was to see everything in English. The money was also a bit confusing. The bills were easy enough to figure out, but the coins didn't make sense. The Euro coins are easy, the smallest coin is the penny, and the size increases as the value increases, with the biggest coin being the 2 Euro coin. With the British coins, the size had nothing to do with the value. The 1 pound coin was a fraction of the size of the 50 and 10 cent pieces. Needless to say we paid with bills whenever possible and ended up with a ton of coins at the end of the weekend. After going through Customs, we hopped on a train into London. We eventually got to Liverpool Street Station, which is a major hub in London's public transportation.
We eventually made it to our hotel, but it had been a long day, especially for Shanna since she had worked that day. We crashed as soon as we checked in, around 11pm.
The next day we arranged to meet up with Adam & Penny at our first stop, the British Museum. The outside architecture of the museum was just as impressive as it's contents inside.
Inside they had treasures from civilizations long gone, as well as from relatively modern history. The biggest draw had to be the Rosetta Stone, the tablet that broke the code of the Egyptian Hieroglyphs.
They also had artifacts from the Parthenon, Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc... One piece that I found fascinating was the Chronometer from the HMS Beagle, the ship Darwin sailed on when exploring the Galapagos Islands.
We had arranged to meet up for lunch around noon after we had explored the museum, and headed to a Victorian pub I'd read about called the Princess Louise. The inside of it was beautiful, by far one of the nicest pubs I've ever been in.
At 2pm we met up with a tour group I'd found that was guided by a person (instead of an audio guide) and it ran for 2 hours, showing some of the best sights of London. We started off walking to the Tower of London as he gave us the history of it. Next we headed to a dock on the Thames where we hopped on a boat that would take us to Westminster. While we waited for the boat to arrive our guide pointed out the HMS Belfast docked across the river. It's now a museum, and is noted for the fact that it was the first ship to fire on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
On the river we saw Tower Bridge, went under London Bridge, and saw the famous London Eye, the huge Ferris wheel that gives you a great view of the city. Eventually we got to Westminster and docked next to Parliament and Big Ben.
After disembarking we continued our tour at Westminster Abbey. On the entrance they had carvings of "heroes", and the only non-British person on there is Martin Luther King, Jr. Next we headed to Queen Anne Street, one of the oldest in London. Of course, the house on the street that got everyone's attention was Sting's.
We then took a stroll through Green Park where we saw Buckingham Palace, as well as a pretty view of London and the London Eye.
When the tour ended, it was around 5pm. We didn't have anything else planned for the evening, so we headed over to Piccadilly Circus, the part of London that is modeled after Times Square in New York. We grabbed dinner at a pub there, then walked over to the M&M store. Shanna & I had really liked the one in New York City that we went to a few years back, so we all wanted to check out this one too.
After walking around there we decided to take a double decker bus back to the area where Adam & Penny were staying (they were in a different hotel) to check out some of the pubs there. We had to change buses a few times, but the first bus we got on had the entire upper portion empty, so we got to sit at the very front and see an interesting view of London as we drove around. We eventually got to their hotel area, found an Irish Pub, and ended the night there.
The next morning we all agreed we wanted to sleep in a bit. We had a full English Breakfast at our hotel, then met up with Adam & Penny back at Piccadilly. We walked through the shops, including the Apple Store in London!
Since we'd all had a huge breakfast, we skipped lunch and headed over to the discount show ticket booths. Our options were limited since it was Sunday, but the decision eventually came down to Lion King and Shrek: The Musical. Since Shanna & I had already seen Lion King, we decided to see Shrek while they saw the Lion King musical. It was a lot of fun...we even bought the Shrek ears they were selling.
The acting was great, and we had a blast. After we got out we all went our separate ways. Penny & Adam wanted to explore Piccadilly more, and Shanna & I wanted to check out a brew pub in the area called Porterhouse Brewing Company. The brew pub was a lot of fun. They had great beer, good food, live music, and a festive atmosphere.
That was our last stop of the night. When we left the pub, we took a cab back to the hotel. The cab driver was friendly, and talked with us the whole ride back. The next morning came VERY early. We got up at 4am, and were checked out by 5:15am. I laughed when I asked the hotel clerk if the Tube trains were running at that time. He said "To be honest, I've never taken the train this early, so I'm not sure". We didn't risk it, and just took the bus that stopped outside of our hotel to Liverpool Street Station. Adam & Penny were there, and we all hopped on the train to the airport.
The London trip was a lot of fun, and I'd like to go back again in the off season. The only complaint we had was the ridiculous amount of people using the Tubes. We were packed in like sardines with every ride.
You can click here or any pictures above to see all the pictures we took in London.
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