No place like London
I tried to get a picture much like the one two entries ago...
We left DC at 7:30pm, and then 6 hours later, we arrived at 7am in London. The flight on Virgin Atlantic was good overall. Our personal On-Demand DVD players were not functioning that well, but we did manage to watch Shrek III and then I watched Waitress. The food was actually quite good. S slept a little, but I didn't at all. By the time we landed after having had about 3-4 hours of darkness and no sleep, it was a bit tough to start the day all over again...but really exciting to be in England!!
It took a while to go through customs, get the luggage, and catch the hotel shuttle, but we finally made it to our hotel at 11am.
But we couldn't check in until 2pm so we dropped off our luggage and began to walk through Notting Hill to Portobello Market, a large outdoor street market with lots of fresh produce, arts & crafts, etc. From what I can remember, it was lovely, very quaint and charming, but after being awake for about 24 hours, I was feeling very much like a walking zombie.
We did notice signs outside of convenient stores that said "TUBE STRIKE OFFICIAL- STARTS 7PM TONIGHT" Not good as we planned to rely heavily on the Tube to get places, as most Londoners do.
We made it back to the hotel at 1:30 and they let us check in. The room was REALLY. SMALL. I'm talking 7x10 plus a bathroom small. No A/C which was bothersome until we got a fan on the 4th night at the advice of a tourist attractions ticket-seller. We took a 2-hour nap and felt surprisingly human afterwards, ready to explore!
Our room with window. On the other side of the bed is the other wall. Claustrophic much? ;)
Because of the Tube strike, we decided to buy our "Oyster cards" and use them for the buses instead. We hopped onto a double-decker bus, top level. That was fun :)
But not before calling our parents to let them know we arrived safely.
We went directly to the first big tourist attraction, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. This is where I warn you that I'm big into history, especially British history, so I will be giving a little intro info on the sites we saw. And sometimes more ;)
"Big Ben" which is actually the name of the bell, not the clock tower, and for the first time in a long time, it was not chiming due to maintanence
Westminster Abbey was built in the late 1040's under the reign of King Edward II, the Confessor. That's enough history on this one. It was probably the oldest building I've ever physically seen thus far. We took a walking tour, our first of 3 "London Walks" we chose to do. I highly recommend any London Walk because the ones we took were all awesome and highly informative.
Picture time!
Of course, the queen or king have their own entrance
We walked over the Westminster bridge and Thames River
While we're on the subject of the Thames, England is very proud of its success story from turning a river of...well, shit, into one of the cleanest rivers in the world. There was no bad smell, very unlike the time of the "Great Stink of 1858" when the smell was so bad, people frequently fainted from it and died of cholera from the bacteria (all throughout the 1840's - 60's)
We move from that delightful subject to my favorite picture:
And a blurry "London Eye" which we took a ride on later in the trip.
We also saw a couple of ghosts
We took the Tube halfway back, hearing that at least 2 lines were open, and then another bus. It was annoying and took longer, but at least we made it back and crashed by 11pm.
More to come...!
We left DC at 7:30pm, and then 6 hours later, we arrived at 7am in London. The flight on Virgin Atlantic was good overall. Our personal On-Demand DVD players were not functioning that well, but we did manage to watch Shrek III and then I watched Waitress. The food was actually quite good. S slept a little, but I didn't at all. By the time we landed after having had about 3-4 hours of darkness and no sleep, it was a bit tough to start the day all over again...but really exciting to be in England!!
It took a while to go through customs, get the luggage, and catch the hotel shuttle, but we finally made it to our hotel at 11am.
But we couldn't check in until 2pm so we dropped off our luggage and began to walk through Notting Hill to Portobello Market, a large outdoor street market with lots of fresh produce, arts & crafts, etc. From what I can remember, it was lovely, very quaint and charming, but after being awake for about 24 hours, I was feeling very much like a walking zombie.
We did notice signs outside of convenient stores that said "TUBE STRIKE OFFICIAL- STARTS 7PM TONIGHT" Not good as we planned to rely heavily on the Tube to get places, as most Londoners do.
We made it back to the hotel at 1:30 and they let us check in. The room was REALLY. SMALL. I'm talking 7x10 plus a bathroom small. No A/C which was bothersome until we got a fan on the 4th night at the advice of a tourist attractions ticket-seller. We took a 2-hour nap and felt surprisingly human afterwards, ready to explore!
Our room with window. On the other side of the bed is the other wall. Claustrophic much? ;)
Because of the Tube strike, we decided to buy our "Oyster cards" and use them for the buses instead. We hopped onto a double-decker bus, top level. That was fun :)
But not before calling our parents to let them know we arrived safely.
We went directly to the first big tourist attraction, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. This is where I warn you that I'm big into history, especially British history, so I will be giving a little intro info on the sites we saw. And sometimes more ;)
"Big Ben" which is actually the name of the bell, not the clock tower, and for the first time in a long time, it was not chiming due to maintanence
Westminster Abbey was built in the late 1040's under the reign of King Edward II, the Confessor. That's enough history on this one. It was probably the oldest building I've ever physically seen thus far. We took a walking tour, our first of 3 "London Walks" we chose to do. I highly recommend any London Walk because the ones we took were all awesome and highly informative.
Picture time!
Of course, the queen or king have their own entrance
We walked over the Westminster bridge and Thames River
While we're on the subject of the Thames, England is very proud of its success story from turning a river of...well, shit, into one of the cleanest rivers in the world. There was no bad smell, very unlike the time of the "Great Stink of 1858" when the smell was so bad, people frequently fainted from it and died of cholera from the bacteria (all throughout the 1840's - 60's)
We move from that delightful subject to my favorite picture:
And a blurry "London Eye" which we took a ride on later in the trip.
We also saw a couple of ghosts
We took the Tube halfway back, hearing that at least 2 lines were open, and then another bus. It was annoying and took longer, but at least we made it back and crashed by 11pm.
More to come...!