The flight over to London was easy breezy. Our plane landed at a smaller airport a little outside the city at London Luton. It was simple though to catch a bus over to the train station and then from there it was a short 30 minute ride to the main station in London at St. Pancras. From there we were able to walk to our place of stay for the next three nights...The Generator Hostel! Yes people we actually stayed at a hostel for this leg of the trip. We were trying to stay in budget friendly accommodation and a decent area of town so this is what we came up with. London is not a cheap city so The Generator it was. Thankfully we did have our our room with our own beds, bunk beds that is. I got stuck on the top bunk and mom was on the bottom bunk. The beds were a little janky in the fact that mom couldn't sit up in her bed without banging her head from the above bunk. They were pretty comfortable however. There was a sink in the room but the toilet was down the hall and the showers were either on the floor above ours or below. The ones on our floor were currently being renovated. We were also lucky enough to have a room over looking a little ally that was designated both the "quiet zone" and also doubled as the smokers area. Anyway, more on the hostel later.
We got to the hostel before check in time so we dropped our luggage in the luggage room (a complete and utter mess) and then we went to find some lunch. Just ate at a little sandwich shop near the hostel and went and bought our London underground tickets for the next few days. We also stopped off at an internet cafe to check some e-mail's and facebook of course. Basically just wasting a little time till the clock hit 2:00. Finally we were able to get in the room and then we could head out to explore London Town! Our first stop was the famous Harrods department store. The store is owned by the father of Dodi Al Fayed who was the man that was dating Princess Diana when they were both killed in the car accident in Paris. One of my mom's co-workers wanted a Harrods bag so that was our main reason for going. They have really famous food halls as well, with the most decadent chocolates, prime cuts of meat, seafood, cheese and the list could go on. We ran across some Turkish Delight that tempted us. Everyone remembers the book The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and how the kids just loved Turkish Delight. So being a kid at heart, I too had to try the little sweet treat. So my thoughts, meh. Nothing special, it tasted like the candied orange slices you can get back in the states. Here are a few pics of the food halls and Harrods.
The last pic is me with my little slice of Turkish Delight. So we walked up and down the giant department store. They have a really ridiculous area called Animal Kingdom where everything is devoted to pets. Whether it's gourmet food, blinged out dog chains and collars, or pet clothes, they had it!
We took it back to the Generator after dinner so we could get some rest before our Fat Tire bike tour around the city the next morning. Mom laid down right away and I went downstairs to the common area so I could get online and update this here blog. Around 1:00am the fire alarm sounds all of a sudden. Knowing the age range of the clientele staying at the hostel, I automatically figured it was a false alarm and some young punk had probably pulled the alarm on purpose. After about 30 seconds it went off and no smoke was visible so my assumptions were right. Other than hearing chatter outside our window all night, we did manage to finally drift off and get some shut eye before our bike tour the next day.
So here we are on Tuesday, March 23rd, our second day in London. The meeting time for our bike tour is 11:00 am and we met outside one of the underground stations near their shop. It was a small group of 7 and our tour guide Matt, who is a native Londoner. We hop on our bikes and off we go with the first stop at Kensington Palace and Kensington Gardens.
This palace was a little bit underwhelming if you ask me. When I think of where the Royal Family lives, it's a lot more glitz and glamour than this place! Next stop was the Arch (seems like every city has one) that was dedicated to The Duke of Wellington...at least I think, so don't quote me on this!
Supposedly you can go to the top of the arch and actually see the backyard of Buckingham Palace and what's over the giant wall that surrounds it. Maybe we'll check that out on the next trip. Which leads us to the 3rd stop of Buckingham Palace. You can see it in the background.
At this point in our journey it was time to have some lunch and we just went to a little sandwich place called Pret A Manger that I had eaten at once before when I was in Edinburgh. It was located in Trafalgar Square which was a very busy part of the city and loaded with history.
Of course no tour of London would be complete without a stop at Westminster Abbey. It looks strikingly similar to Notre Dame here in Paris, actually.
One of the highlights I enjoyed was also seeing the famous guards out in front of Buckingham Palace with their big bear skin hats! But they weren't wearing red which was kinda a disappointment.
The last few stops were that of memorials for Princess Diana and also one more but I can't remember who it was for. It started raining on us at the Princess Diana memorial but to be honest it wouldn't be a day in London if it hadn't rained! Once we the tour was over and we dropped our bikes off at the shop, we asked our guide Matt and his boss David what we should do next. They pointed us in the direction of Portobello street for their quirky shops and street market. It was also in the Notting Hill area as well. That was the cutest little street and they had a great cupcake shop called Hummingbird where I snagged one of my favorite sweet treats.
After walking around for quite some time and making one of our notorious coffee shop breaks to figure out our next game plan we worked up an appetite and decided on Fish and Chips and a little bar/restaurant called Sun and Splendour. We just shared a plate and each had a beer. We then walked towards the metro but made several stops into some cute little cheapo clothing stores. I bought another pair of jeggings and mom didn't get anything. And back to the hostel we went.
The next morning we slept in a bit and decided to hit up the rest of the tourist stuff that we didn't get to see on our bike ride. First stop was the London Eye which is the giant ferris wheel looking thing that a lot of people recognize. We first had lunch and then walked over to it. Seriously that thing moves at a snail's pace! You can barely tell it's even moving, the whole time mom and I thought it was shut down.
We crossed over the River Thames so we could get a closer look at Big Ben and we contemplated going inside Westminster Abbey as well.
After we venture over to the Abbey and realized they wanted some ridiculous price to enter (if you weren't worshiping that is) we blew that notion off and opted to go check out the Saint Paul's Cathedral where Princess Diana and Charles got married. Of course we arrive exactly at the same time they were not letting anymore visitors inside! Just our luck! We caught the outside however and that was good enough for us. the lazy bums that we are, we went back to the hostel and took a small nap before our Jack the Ripper walking tour started at 7:30. The tour consisted of a guide taking us around to the various sights where the 5 women were murdered by Jack the Ripper during the 1800's. Our guide was rather corny but knowledgeable and fun. It lasted a couple hours and we were done by 9:30...just in time to book it over to NOBU for dinner. That's right ladies and gents, mom and I are now among the Hollywood Elite to have dined at the famous restaurant. I'll have to admit, it wasn't as special as I thought it would be. I thought their specialty was sushi, but come to find out they just served all the basic rolls and no specialty ones. We came to the conclusion that what is so delicious, must be the cooked food. That was our final night in London before we continued to Berlin for our 3rd leg of the trip. Our flight out of Gatwick wasn't until late afternoon the next day so we still had a half day to explore any last few things before we left the island. The one last thing that we hadn't previously checked out that I wanted to was the Tower Bridge which is in most of the postcards you see. A lot of people think it's actually the London Bridge but it's not!
Afterwards we took a short train ride out to Gatwick to find out our flight to Berlin had been delayed for 2 hours! Then we found out it wasn't and rushed through security to catch the plane and then were told again that indeed it was delayed! Bought a travel book on Italy for my upcoming journey there and mom journaled a tad while we waited. At last our plane arrived and we were off to Berlin!
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