London, UK day 2

2/14/08 1600h, On Eurostar from St. Pancras, London to Gare du Nord, Paris.
We got up early, took our showers (down the hall) and ate a traditional English breakfast, which consisted of O.J., toast, bacon, a poached egg, sausage, and baked beans. Traditionally blood pudding is also on the plate but luckily there was none on ours. It was quite good, but the bacon was soo thick and the baked beans with breakfast was a interesting addition. Pam had tea and I coffee, it was a nice breakfast. We emailed a few people from our laptop using the hotel’s wireless service and headed out for the day.

We decided to walk to our desitnations with our pedometer on Pam’s hip. Well, 22, 500 steps later we saw quite a bit of London. We first went to Picadilly Cirdus. A busteling area with lots of shops, lights, and people. The center, complete with a fountain toped by a naked cupid, reminded us of a mini Times Square. We wandered around and kept seeing new things in the distance. We really only had a few things we wanted to hit before catching our train to Paris, but everything was so interesting. We stopped by an umbrella shop that has been in business since 1830. They had some pretty cool walking canes as well. We looked into a custom hat shop that is famous for their mens hats. At $100 to $300 per hat we decided a picture may be a good souvenier instead. We headed toward Parliament, but ended up in Trafalgar Square, adjacent to the National Gallery, and Nelson’s Column. From there we meandered down Whitehall Street and arrived in perfect time to catch the show at Horse Guards Palace. Next we detoured by Big Ben, which started to ring as Jake took Pam’s picture. We looked out over the Thames fom Westminster Bridge.

We eventually arrived at the Houses of Parliament, along with hoards of school children. As we admired the intricate architecture and decorative finish work we turned to see the backside of Westminster Abby where Princess Diana was married. Everything was so amazing, beautiful, and historic. However it was bitter cold and we had to catch the train so we headed for the bus stop… the only problem was, we couldn’t find the correct bus and we were miles from our destination. We wandered around, asked a few people and checked the bus routes and finally made our way onto a double decker bus.

We jumped onto the train and are on our way to Paris… oh how excited we are!

London, UK

2/13/08

Today we arrived in London and found our way to the little Central Hotel. We stayed across the street from the check-in desk on the top floor, Room 19. It was a cute little place, shower and toilet down the hall. Our room was tiny. It barely fit the double bed and a small dresser. It actually had a little sink in the room (the kind with 2 faucets… one for cold, and one for hot). That proved difficult when trying to wash your hands and not burn them.

We found London to be quite expensive when using the US dollar. We bought one-day subway passes for 5 pounds each (which totals about 10 US dollars each). We rode the subway around, visited Convent Garden, Buckinham Palace and got to see a few other cool buildings including the one that looks similar to an egg. Pam says it looks like a pickle. We’ll leave it at that. We saw the London Bridge and the Tower Bridge. They were so beautiful at night all lit up. It was quite cold though… so we hurried back to the subway and back to our hotel stopping only for a late night snack. It appeared we bought too much food, so we left our cheese outside on the windowsill to stay fresh over the night.

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