Reality
set in when we woke up this morning and realized our time in London was coming to an end. Luckily, our flight wasn’t until 5pm, so we had a few hours left to
play tourist before heading to the airport.
We ate a quick breakfast downstairs in the hotel, then went back to the
room to finish packing our luggage (which was quite a fiasco considering the
tiny size our hotel room!). I spoke to
the receptionist about checking out of the hotel while DH carried everything
down to the lobby so they could hold our bags.
I had a
few ideas of things we could do for our last few hours in London. We could have gone to Abbey Road to take photos of the famous
crosswalk from the Beatles album, or gone shopping at Harrods, or explored
Camden Market. In the end, we decided to
go back down to Tower Bridge because we had yet to take a
good photo with the bridge and we wanted to walk across it. By now, we had taken the Tube to the Tower
Hill station several times, so at least it was familiar and we knew where to
go!
As we
approached the Tower of London, we could see that the gates
were open and we could access the walkway along the Thames River. This was where we tried to go the other night
but couldn’t get there because the gate was closed.
This
was as close as we got to entering the Tower of London… We peaked inside the gates as
we walked along the sidewalk. I’m sure
there’s plenty more to see inside those stone walls, but that will have to wait
until a future visit to London!
The
puffy white clouds made for a beautiful backdrop! After a heat wave over the weekend, the
temperatures were in the low 70’s this morning, so it was the perfect weather
for a little walk around the city.
I love
how this photo came out, with the sun shining bright against the towers, the
red doube-decker bus driving across the bridge, and the Shard sticking out in
the background.
We
doubled back to find a staircase leading up onto the bridge so we could walk
across it.
The
sidewalk juts out around the towers and there are some displays about the
history of the bridge, so we took a few minutes to read them. Sorry, no photos of that!
Once we
reached the south side of the Thames, we walked west through the neighborhood in search of a
supermarket. We wanted to buy some candy
to bring back to our families as souvenirs, and needed to save that task for
today or it would have melted in our hotel room! We found a small local market right on the
corner which sold sampler packs of 6 or 7 varieties of Cadbury chocolate
bars. They were like Halloween candy,
with individual mini bite-sized pieces of candies we had never seen before in
the States, so that was perfect! We
bought several boxes for our relatives, then continued walking around
Southwark.
Potters Fields Park with City Hall peaking out in
the background.
I liked
the fencing outside the park.
I just
could not get enough of these pubs! And
even better when another major monument is showing behind it!!
This
long piece of concrete was actually a water feature but it’s hard to see the
water trickling down in the photo.
Either way, it said exactly what I was wanting in that moment… more London!
I
realized we were close by Borough Market, so we walked over there to check it
out. We weren’t hungry since we only ate
breakfast an hour earlier, but it was still fun to look around at the various
vendors.
Around 11:30am, we decided we’d done enough
walking and made our way back to the London Bridge station to head back to the
hotel to retrieve our luggage. I still
cannot get over how clean it was in the Underground stations and how wonderful
it was to see working escalators at every entrance/exit!
The
location of Central Hotel was extremely convenient for when we had to travel
with our luggage. We collected our bags
from the lobby, walked a half block up to St. Pancras station, and that it was
it! Super easy! They have a tourist information office at the
station so I went in to ask about returning our Oyster Cards while DH waited in
the hallway with our bags. From what I
could find online before the trip, I was under the impression that you cannot
return your Oyster Card to get a refund of the £5 deposit if you still have
time left on a Travel Card. The Travel
Card was for 7 days, but today was only our 6th day in London, I didn’t think we could get
back our deposit but it was worth taking a moment to speak with an agent and
find out for sure. In the end, I’m glad
I did that because it was no problem at all to get a refund for our 2 Oyster
Cards! Of course, you are welcome to
keep your card as a souvenir or for future visits to London, but who knows when we’ll be
back so it made more sense to just take the refund since we could get it.
Our
next mission was to purchase tickets to Gatwick Airport. That journey would not have been covered by
our Travel Card, so we opted to buy paper tickets from the machine as opposed
to loading more money onto the Oyster Card to cover the cost of that
journey. There is a specific train
called the Gatwick Express which runs nonstop between the airport and Victoria
Station, but since we were not staying on that side of the city, it did not
make sense for us. Instead, we needed to
take the Thameslink train from St. Pancras Station. The train would make a few stops before
reaching Gatwick, and it would take us about an hour to get there, but we could
stay on the same train for the entire journey so that made the most sense when
traveling with lots of luggage. The ride
cost about £12 per person, and it was easy to follow the directions on the
ticket machines and pay with a credit card.
We
asked an agent where to board the Thameslink and he directed us all the way
down to the far end of St. Pancras Station.
Once there, it was very clearly labeled and we looked on the electronic
schedule boards for the when the next train would arrive. The trains run about every 15 minutes, but we
were lucky and only had to wait about 2 minutes for the next train to
arrive. When we climbed on board, there
was a luggage rack right there near the doors and there were plenty of open
seats. The whole process could not be
any easier! It was now around 1pm, so it was not peak rush hour,
and the train car was never more than half-way full (although I think they did
run out of space in our luggage rack towards the end of the journey!).
Exiting
the train at Gatwick, we followed signs up the escalator to enter the South
Terminal, and the Norwegian Air check in counter was the first one when we
walked through the doors! The separate
line for people with premium seats had one couple speaking with the agent at
the counter, so we waited in line for maybe 3 minutes. The agent did ask to weigh our backpacks, so
that was different from what we experienced in California, but it wasn’t an issue because
both bags were under the 10kg limit. She
checked our 3 rolling bags (which were all under the 20kg limit), and gave us
passes to access the lounge inside the terminal.
There
was hardly anyone in line for the priority line at security, and before we knew
it, we were walking through the terminal in search of the lounge. It was located down a hallway off to the side
in the upper level of the terminal, but there were plenty of signs pointing us
in the right direction so it was easy to find.
We handed over our passes at the reception desk and were pleased to see
it was much less crowded than the lounge at Oakland’s airport! We found some chairs near the windows, and
took turns exploring the options of snacks and drinks. We skipped lunch today, anticipating a spread
similar to what we had in Oakland, but sadly, we weren’t so lucky
this time around. They had a small
platter of fresh veggies and hummus, coleslaw, a few bland dry cakes, and
couple of hot dishes with baked beans and potatoes that looked completely
unappetizing. They did have fresh
popcorn and a bunch of flavored salts you could add to the bag, but the popcorn
was burnt both times they brought out fresh bags.
I guess
I can’t really complain because it was free!
The drinks selection was much more impressive, with a self-serve station
for beer and cider on tap, wine, and an assortment of hard liquors and
mixers. DH was thrilled that he could
make his own drink and not be throttled by a bartender like in Oakland, and I just stuck with a glass
of wine.
We spent
about an hour and a half in the lounge, helping ourselves to refills of our
drinks. Gatwick does not announce the
departure gate until it is nearly time to board the plane, but luckily, there
was an electronic screen in the lounge where we could find out our gate once it
was announced. After we left the lounge,
we got our first glimpse at the Gatwick terminal. It looked like a shopping mall! There were lots of stores and food vendors,
with tables and benches and lots of places to sit, but it felt very chaotic
because it wasn’t organized by gate like most airports I’ve been to. This really made me appreciate having access
to the lounge, and I would consider paying for the passes out of pocket if
flying during a busy time of day, just to avoid the craziness in this huge
waiting room. I guess it makes sense
that it was so busy in there, considering many people arrived early for their
international flights, but then had a lot of time to spare before learning their
gate number so they have to wait in this communal space. It looked very stressful and not relaxing at
all!
It took
us about 15 minutes to walk through the waiting area, down an escalator, then
through a series of corridors, before we finally reached our gate. DH appreciated seeing lots of people wearing
Yankees t-shirts from the London Series games, which made sense considering we
were flying back to New York! Just like
in Oakland, Norwegian starts boarding their planes over an hour
before departure, and we were among the first on the plane because of our
premium seats.
Our
flight attendant served glasses of water and juice, and passed out ear buds for
the in-flight entertainment system. Soon
enough, it was time to take off for our 8-hour flight across the pond.
The
giant windows on this plane allow for some beautiful photos! Based on this view of grass and trees lining
the runways, you’d never know this airport is located so close to one of the
world’s biggest cities!
I had
fun playing with the interactive screen.
If you touched the white location markers, it gave you information about
that city.
DH and
I synced up our TVs to watch Deadpool together.
After using the audio guides in Paris and London, we got really good at counting
to 3, then hitting play or stop at the same time so we’d stay synced up to the
same spot.
About
an hour into the flight, they served our first meal, with a choice of chicken
or beef. I opted for the beef… it was a
steak with noodles, but I could barely eat it because the steak was several
notches above well done, and the noodles and veggies were very spicy. I just ate the roll the salad, and the cake
for dessert and that was enough for me.
I spent
most of the flight watching movies on the TVs, and drifting in and out of
sleep. I very rarely sleep even a few
minutes on planes, so I must have been very tired from 12 days of walking over
20,000 steps a day! The 8-hour flight
passed quickly, and soon enough, they were serving our second meal, about an
hour and a half before landing. This
time, we did not get an option… it was chicken and prosciutto over a small
salad, with a roll, cheese, and a candy bar for dessert. Again, this wasn’t 5-star dining, but at
least it was edible!
Our
flight was making great time and the pilot announced that we would be landing
30 minutes early. This made for a
beautiful approach into New York and JFK Airport with the sun setting over the
city.
If you
look closely at the horizon, you can see the Manhattan skyline!
I
should have known not to be excited that we were landing early. Sure enough, a minute after we landed, the pilot
announced that we were too early and there was still a plane in our gate. The details of what happened next are a bit
fuzzy, partly because it happened several months ago, but mostly because it was
now after midnight London time and I was too tired to
follow the specifics. I think there was
a problem with the plane in our original gate, so they had us taxi out to some
distant point in the airport to wait for a new gate. It took over an hour before we finally did
get a gate assigned to us. Meanwhile, I
had called my parents to let them know we landed and they should pick us up,
then I had to call back to say never mind, we don’t have a gate and don’t know
when we can get off the plane. At some
point, my phone stopped working! Several
people in seats near us had the same problem and we realized it must be
something to do with the metal construction of the airplane and it was blocking
our signals, so I had no way to communicate with my parents! The pilot kept coming on the PA system to say
he was not happy with how JFK airport was handling this situation and he apologized
many times that we were being held captive on this plane. The one positive, at least for DH and myself,
was we were sitting comfortably in our premium seats during this whole
ordeal. When the flight attendants came
around to collect the blankets 20 minutes before landing, I asked if I could
hold onto mine until it was time to get off the plane because I was cold and it
was so comfy to snuggle up underneath the blanket, so I was very happy to still
have that blanket for this extra hour on the plane.
When we
finally did get a gate, it was complete mayhem with everyone pushing to get off
the plane ASAP. The flight attendants
held back the people sitting in coach so the people in the premium seats could
exit first, so of course, the people in coach were upset about that and started
yelling at the flight attendants. After
exiting the plane, we went through immigration using the computer kiosks, then
spoke with an agent inside the booth for all of 10 seconds so he could stamp
our passports, and we were on our way to collect our luggage. The downside to getting off the plane first
is that JFK is a huge airport so we got to the luggage carrousel long before
our luggage did! I called my parents
while DH waited for our bags. I thought
another perk of the premium seats was that our luggage would be first off the
plane, but that did not happen. It is
possible that that was not a perk, I’m not sure. Our bags came out in the third batch of bags,
and we met my dad outside. By the time
we got back to my parents house, it was close to 3am London time and we were completely
exhausted! After a quick hello to my
mom, we went straight upstairs to the guestroom and fell asleep moments later.
I won’t
go into the details of my time in New York since that has nothing to do
with this review. We celebrated my
parents’ 40th wedding anniversary, we went to the beach, and on
Wednesday night, we went to Citifield with DH’s cousins for a Subway Series
game of the Mets vs. Yankees. That was one of my arguments against seeing the London Series… knowing we would see
the Yankees play 3 days later in New York!
On
Sunday, we packed everything up, my parents took us to the airport, and we flew
back to San Jose on JetBlue.
That
concludes my review of our trip to Paris and London. Overall, we had a wonderful time and really
made the most of our limited days in each city.
Please let me know if you have any questions, and thanks for reading!
Fitbit Daily Summary for Tuesday 7/2/19… Steps: 13,900, Miles: 6.72, Flights of Stairs: 13 (not too shabby considering we spent a third of the day on an airplane!)
Today
was our last full day in Europe so I planned something special as our grand finale. Very early on in my research, I discovered a
full day (over 12 hours!!!) bus tour that takes you to Windsor Castle, Bath,
and Stonehenge, and we were both immediately excited about this
opportunity. Several different companies
offer this tour, but we booked with Viator because they were offering a 10% off
discount for Black Friday. Of course,
Viator is just a middle man as a booking agent so they would not be operating
the actual tour. When I got our
confirmation email, it said the tour was with Evan Evans Tours, so that was
fine with me because they got good reviews on Trip Advisor. There were several ways to book this tour,
but we opted to book with all of our entrance fees included, because why would
we NOT do that?! It would be a pretty
boring tour to just take a bus to each of the towns but not enter the main
attractions! We could cancel for free up
to 2 days in advance, so that was reassuring although we did not plan to
cancel. As busy of a day as I knew this
would be, the idea of spending some time sitting on a bus sounded wonderful
after 10 straight days of walking all over Paris and London!
The
only down side to this tour was that we had to meet at the Victoria Coach
Station by 7:30am! Holy moley that
was crazy early!! It would take us about
30 minutes to get there from our hotel, so we needed to leave by 7am at the latest. Our hotel did not open the breakfast room
until 7am so that meant we were on our own to find breakfast
today. I set the alarm clock for
zero-dark-thirty so we could get ready and leave the hotel by 6:45am. We had already scouted out a Costa Coffee on
the corner of our street so we stopped in there to pick up some croissants for
breakfast. We also bought some
pre-packaged sandwiches to eat on the bus for lunch. The tour description said there was no
designated lunch break and we did not want to waste our precious time at the
attractions with searching for a place to buy lunch, so it worked out perfectly
to pick up a few sandwiches here.
We
hopped on the blue Victoria line to take the Tube to the
Victoria Station. Unfortunately, what we
did not realize was that the “Victoria Station” and the “Victoria Coach
Station” are two different places! They
are about a 10 minute walk apart, but it took us longer than that because we
had to keep asking people where to go. I
had assumed it was all in the same building, but I guess it was no different
than in Manhattan when you arrive by train into Penn Station and need to
walk to Port Authority to catch a bus.
Silly me!
Anyway,
after a stressful and confusing few minutes of fast-paced walking, we finally
found the Victoria Coach Station. The
directions said to meet at Gates 1 to 5, so of course, when we entered the
building, there was a sign pointing to the left towards Gates 0 and 1, and
towards the right for Gates 2 to 5.
Awesome. We went to the left,
assuming both directions would meet in the middle at the end of the hall, and
that turned out to be correct. We
spotted a big sign for Evan Evans Tours and there was a lady with a clip board
checking other people in. There were
already over one hundred people standing around in this area, so I can only
imagine how early they had arrived! We
found our names on the check list and the lady gave us wrist bands and said to
stand in line as the buses were already boarding.
We got
at the end of a very long line, so I immediately realized there must be
multiple coach buses doing our same itinerary.
Sure enough, as we approached the front of the line, there were still
tons of people in line behind us. The
first bus must have been close to full by now, and I did not want to be the
last to board because we’d get the worst seats at the back of the bus, or
possibly even be split up and not get to sit together. No thanks!
When it was our turn to board, I asked if that bus was nearly full, and
the lady said yes, that we were the last two people on that bus. I asked if it was possible to go on the next
bus instead, and she pointed me towards a second line of 8 other people who
must have made the same request!
Haha! Clearly I was not the only
person with that concern! After that,
the person in charge came over to see what was happening and she was very upset
that they couldn’t find people willing to take the last 2 seats on the first
bus so she basically forced the next people in line to get on that bus without
giving them the option of refusing. I
felt bad for them, but I was happy that we were now one of the first people to
board the second bus and we could have our pick of seats.
As we
boarded the bus, our guide handed us each a portable audio device called a Vox
Box and some headphones. I wish I had
known we would be using this device because the ear buds were very
uncomfortable for me and I would have brought my own pair, but since I didn’t
know, my pair was back in the hotel. We
found seats towards the front of the bus and got settled in. There was a storage rack above the seats to
stash our bags, and the seats were plush and well padded, but there was no
toilet on the bus. I don’t think I’ve
ever seen a coach bus in this style without a toilet at the back, so that was
surprising to me. It didn’t take long
for all 50 people to board the bus, and then we left the station. Each bus left as it filled up, so we knew we
would be the second bus to arrive at Windsor Castle.
Our
tour guide for today was Andy, and the bus driver was Russell. Andy used a microphone on the bus to explain
the plan for our day, and a bit of history and background information. It took about an hour to drive to Windsor Castle in rush hour traffic, and Andy
spoke for that entire time! We arrived
at about 8:30am, and there was only one other bus in the parking
lot! That was probably the first Evan
Evans bus to depart, so it paid off that our tour left Central London so early in the morning! As Andy led us from the parking lot, we could
see the Castle up in the distance.
On the
way, Andy pointed out this portrait of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle made
entirely out of Legos! How cool is
that?! It was created for their royal
wedding which was held here in 2018, and remains on display at the Windsor train station.
We
walked through the train station and wound our way through several side streets
until we saw this straight ahead of us:
Andy
explained that he was going to let us walk around Windsor Castle on our own and that we would
need to find our own way back to the bus by 11:30am, so he pointed out this horse
statue on the corner as a good landmark to find the right side street back
towards the bus parking lot.
He
continued to walk through several more side streets as we approached the Castle
entrance. I snapped this photo while we
were walking and it turned out to be one of my favorite photos of the entire
trip! At the far end of the street, you
can see the gate where we would eventually exit Windsor Castle at the end of our time there.
Finally,
we walked up along the side of a stone wall and Andy told us to line up here to
wait to enter the Castle. They don’t
open until 9:30am so we were very early and would have a long wait here in
this spot. Andy filled the time and kept
us entertained with more stories about British history. This was one of the times when we made use of
the Vox Box so we could hear him clearly, and you can see his Vox Box hanging
from his neck.
This is
Andy…
I
couldn’t resist the opportunity for a photo with the outer gates when no other
people were around!
It was
kind of fun that we could keep listening to Andy while we took this photo! Notice the ear buds in our ears and the box hanging
around our necks…
In this
time, Andy explained that if we wanted to watch the Changing of the Guards, the
best place to do it was OUTSIDE of the castle grounds, back near that blue
horse statue. He said that they close
off the exit gate when the guards are marching through, and if you get stuck
inside the castle at that time, you likely will not be able to get back to the
bus in time for our 11:30 time of departure. He said we should exit through that gate by
10:50am and that we could line up along the sidewalk outside of the castle to
watch the guards march by, but we could not watch the actual changing of the
guards because then we would be too late to catch the bus.
While we were standing there, we noticed hundreds of other tour groups arriving in the area and getting on line behind us. The line snaked all the way down the street and around the corner, so it was great knowing we were at the front of the line, even if it meant we were twiddling our thumbs in that spot for about an hour before the Castle opened! At least once we were allowed to enter, we would be first to go through security and stay ahead of the crowds inside the Castle. The people at the end of that line would be waiting for a very long time to enter the Castle and would ultimately have less time to spend there. Evan Evans Tours for the win!
Finally,
at 9:30am, they allowed us to enter a big holding room where we
lined up again as Andy handed out tickets to each of us. We then showed these tickets to the security
agent as we walked through the metal detector and our bags passed through the
x-ray machine. Andy had warned us to
leave any questionable possessions on the bus so we wouldn’t have a hold up at
the security check. After that, Andy
left us to explore on our own. When I
booked this tour, I had assumed our guide would escort us around the grounds
and explain what we were seeing, but that was not the case. We could have purchased audioguides, but by
now, it was 9:45am, so we only had one hour to see everything before
needing to exit for the Changing of the Guards.
We didn’t think we’d have enough time to listen to the guide and go at
that slower pace if we wanted to see everything, so we opted to just walk
around and see what we could see. As it
turned out, one hour was exactly the perfect amount of time for us to move
through the grounds at a quick pace and get to explore St. George’s Chapel and the State
Apartments. It probably helped speed us
along that we were not permitted to take photos inside (although I did
accidentally take one or two before I realized no photos were allowed! Oops!).
Once
past security, we followed the path along the outer perimeter of the property.
When we
got to this fork in the road, we could either continue towards St. George’s Chapel (on the right of this
photo), or go down to the State Apartments.
Andy had said he recommends spending more time at the Chapel because
most people don’t save enough time to see this place and he thinks it is more
interesting than the Apartments, so we went there first.
The
side of St. George’s Chapel
When
you enter, there are ropes to prevent you from walking into the middle of the
chapel, and you have to walk along a specific path that winds all around the
chapel. First you walk along the side
towards the back of the room…
From
the back of the chapel, you have a beautiful view of the entire room…
At that
point, I saw the sign which said no photos allowed, so I had to stop taking
pictures. Bummer!
This chapel was the site of many royal funerals, and many of them are buried here so you can walk around and view their coffins. It caught me off guard at how moved I was when I saw the coffins of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth I in their own special room in the chapel. I really wasn’t expecting that! Andy was right that this chapel is worth spending some time to explore, but sadly, we had to keep moving if we wanted to see the State Apartments.
As we walked
between the two buildings, we caught a great view between the trees,
overlooking the town and countryside.
I
snapped this one last photo before walking through that door to enter the State
Apartments, where once again, no photos were allowed inside.
We
followed the marked path through a series of rooms used by former Kings and Queens. Although Windsor Castle is her primary residence, the
rooms on our self-guided tour are not used by Queen Elizabeth II. I suppose that is not too surprising though
since the Queen lives here instead of in Buckingham Palace to keep her privacy, so she
probably doesn’t want a bunch of tourists traipsing through her bedroom!
It took
us about 20 minutes to walk through the section of the State Apartments open to
tourists. When we exited, we were in
this interior courtyard which was perfect for a photo opportunity!
It was
getting close to 10:50am so we made our way back out to the exit as Andy
had instructed. It was now much more
crowded than when we walked through earlier this morning.
We
weren’t exactly sure how long it would take to exit out to that street
intersection, but it turned out that as soon as we passed through the opening
at the base of that hill, we were back in front of the gate where we took that
photo while we were waiting to enter the castle. We just had to walk a short distance downhill
and we couldn’t miss the place we needed to go because there were already a ton
of people lining the streets and waiting for the guards to march by.
Right
on time at 10:52am, we heard and saw the marching band coming up the
street!
I just
love those bearskin hats!
It’s so
impressive how well they march perfectly in step…
In less than 2 minutes, the whole thing was over. The guards continued marching towards the castle and that was that! We still had over 30 minutes until we had to meet back at the bus, so we walked around the town for a few minutes, then started walking back towards the parking lot. On the way, we passed a store called EAT which sold to-go sandwiches. Both of us were very hungry by this time and we realized that the sandwiches we bought this morning would not be enough food to fill us up until 7:30pm when the tour ended so we stopped to buy two more sandwiches for a mid-morning snack and we saved our original sandwiches for later in the day. Andy recommended that we use the restrooms in the train station before returning to the bus, so we did that, then walked the rest of the way to the parking lot. We arrived at 11:25am and nearly everyone else on our bus was already back in their seats! We had great luck all day with the people on our bus all arriving promptly for our departure time. I always hear horror stories about these big bus tours where you waste half your day waiting for that one couple who can’t seem to get back to the bus on time. We had no such issues today and pulled out of the Windsor Castle parking lot at exactly 11:30am!
Once we
got going, Andy explained that we would need about 2 hours to get to Bath. He spent some of that time walking through
the bus and speaking to each couple in case we had any questions. I took this opportunity to ask something that
I had been wondering all week but felt kind of silly about asking. I asked Andy about what will happen to the
British National Anthem after the Queen is no longer the Queen. The song is “G-d Save the Queen” so what will
they do when Prince Charles or Prince William takes the throne? He said they will change the lyrics to “G-d
Save the King”! Simple enough, but she
has been the Queen my whole life so I wasn’t sure how it would be handled when
there is a King! Now I know 🙂
We
spent the rest of the 2 hours just relaxing on the bus. The bus had strong air conditioning, which
was much appreciated on this hot summer day, and there were USB charging ports
at each seat so we could keep our phones charged. There wasn’t much to look at during our
journey… just a lot of grass and trees!
As we
got closer to Bath, we spotted some animals
grazing in the pasture. I’m not sure if
they were sheep or goats.
I loved
how the bushes and trees made the countryside look like a patchwork quilt!
Exactly
2 hours after leaving Windsor, we pulled up to a traffic
circle in a quaint town, and Russell parked the bus. Andy told us all to get off the bus because
Russell could not stay here, but that he would return to this spot at 3pm to pick us up. That gave us just an hour and a half to
explore Bath, but first we had to follow Andy to the main attraction:
The Roman Baths. Some people on our tour
did not pay for admission here, so they could spend the full 90 minutes
exploring the town of Bath. The rest of us followed Andy down the street
to a plaza in front of the Bath Abbey, and we were told to wait here until we
could enter the baths.
The
Roman Baths date back to around 40AD when the Romans invaded Britain and discovered the natural hot springs in this region. They channeled the hot mineral water through
lead pipes to create a series of baths, heated steam rooms, and plunge pools. They spent the next 300 years developing this
complex with a large bathhouse, a religious temple, a several public
pools. When the Romans left in 410AD,
the baths were abandoned until they were rediscovered in the late 1800s and
could be restored to the tourist site we know today.
It was
very busy at this time, with 6 sections of corrals for 6 tour buses. One by one, the sections were allowed to
enter the baths, so I guess they were trying to regulate traffic to avoid
overcrowding. We finally got to enter at
2pm, so I wasn’t thrilled that we wasted one third of our
precious time here with just waiting in line.
When we entered, an agent explained that we must not touch the water in
the baths in any way because there is a bacteria in the water which can be very
harmful. That sounded kind of gross, so
no worries, I’ll keep a safe distance away from the water! The audioguides are included with the cost of
your admission, so we took them and started walking through the complex. Andy had said you can speed through in 20
minutes, or you can linger for up to an hour (but then you would miss the bus!),
so we tried to keep a good pace to leave us some time to explore the town of Bath when we exited.
We
listened to about half of the audioguide numbers because we just didn’t have
the time or patience to listen to everything.
There is a ton of history here, but it was very crowded so we didn’t
feel the need to linger very long.
This
was the outer wall of the Temple Courtyard and a stone buttress to support
the corner of the building over the Sacred Spring.
This
display shows a sampling of the over 12,000 Roman coins found at the bottom of
the Sacred Spring.
This is
the spring overflow which carries surplus water from the hot spring to the
original Roman drain, and on to the River Avon back near the traffic circle
where we got off the bus.
We
continued exploring the museum for a few more minutes until we found our way
outside to the Great Bath in the main courtyard. There is algae in the water which makes it
look green and murky, so it wasn’t an issue to comply with the rule to not
touch the water because it was anything but inviting!
This
was one of the smaller pools inside the complex, and they had a video projected
on the far wall to depict people bathing in the pools.
This circular
bath was filled with coins settled along the bottom
A
little blurry, but you get the idea…
We took
one last peek overlooking another pool before walking up the stairs to exit the
baths.
On the
way out, we stopped to use the very clean restrooms, then bypassed the souvenir
shop to exit back out onto one of the back alleys in the town of Bath.
It was
now 2:30pm, so we spent 30 minutes exploring the Roman Baths. Sure, it would have been nice to spend more
time here and to really scour each exhibit and listen to all of the audio guide
recordings, but we knew that was not possible.
In order to hit these 3 major attractions in one day, we knew that we
were signing up for short glimpses at each place and we were okay with that. I definitely wanted some time to explore the
town of Bath, however brief that would be.
We
walked passed a series of narrow streets and pedestrian alleys, lined with
shops and cafes.
Turning
around the corner, we had a beautiful view of the medieval gothic Bath Abbey.
At this
point, DH was hungry and wanted to find somewhere to buy a snack. We had about 20 minutes to go until we needed
to be on the bus so we split up and he walked around the town looking for food
while I walked out towards the Parade Gardens overlooking the River Avon to
get some photos.
This is
the Pulteney Weir, a dam built in the 1600’s to prevent flooding in the town of
Bath, which was later updated in the
1970’s to create this V-shaped design.
In the background, you can see the Pulteney Bridge which was built in the late
1700’s to cross the River Avon and eliminate the need for a ferry.
I was
so charmed by this little town, with something beautiful to see in every
direction.
The
spire peeking out in the background is from St John the Evangelist’s Church, a
Victorian Roman Catholic church that was badly damaged in WWII.
As I
returned to the traffic circle, I could see several tour buses lined up so I
knew I’d better hurry up.
When I
got back to the intersection where Russell dropped us off, I saw DH working his
way through a fresh Belgian waffle topped with nutella. He bought it from The Real Italian Ice Cream
Company, and he was nice enough to save me a bite. Wow, it was delicious! We got back on the bus along with the last
few people on our tour, and the bus pulled away at exactly 3pm.
Andy
told us it would take one hour to get to our final stop at Stonehenge. He handed out special maps and explained how
we could use the laser pointer on the tip of our Vox Boxes to scan each number
on the map and listen to the history of Stonehenge. I have never seen anything like this before,
but it was really easy to use. Andy
recommended that we spend our time on the bus listening to all of the audio
files so that we could focus our time at Stonehenge actually seeing the stones
and taking photos instead of trying to listen to the audio guide in our limited
time out there.
We
pulled into the parking lot at exactly 4pm. It’s amazing how all of our stops today were
such precise distances away (exactly 1 hour from London to Windsor, 2 hours from Windsor to Bath, and now exactly 1 hour from Bath to Stonehenge!) Andy said our bus would be departing at 5:20pm to return to London, and he pointed us down a path
towards the visitor center where we could board a shuttle to drive us out to
the stones. There is a trail if you
choose to walk out to the stones, but that would take 30 minutes so we did not
have enough time to do that (nor did we really want to walk when there was the
option of taking a 5-minute bus ride haha).
There were already several people from other tour buses waiting in line
to take the shuttle, so we couldn’t fit on the first one to arrive. Luckily, another shuttle pulled up a minute
later. Along the way, you have views out
over the vast countryside, with nothing but grass and trees as far as the eye
can see.
When
you exit the shuttle, it is very obvious where to go next. There is a long path through the grass
leading up to and around the stones. By
now, it was late in the afternoon, and there were hundreds of other tourists
here with us, but since the path encircling the stones is so large, it never
really felt crowded.
You can
see lots of people crowded on the right side of this photo. You are not permitted to walk directly up to
the stones, and you must stay on the marked path which forms a circle around
the entire perimeter. The spot where all
those people are standing is the closest point to the stones. We opted to walk clockwise around the stones
so we would end our loop at that spot as a grand finale.
This
was such a huge bucket list moment for us.
We both found it so fascinating to learn the history of Stonehenge and how it was possibly used as
a burial ground. Archeologists believe this
monument dates back to 3000BC. It just
seems so incredible to imagine that these stones have stood in this position
for 5000 years! We took our time walking
around the perimeter and pondering how on earth those people carried these
enormous stones without using a wheel.
This
arrow lines up to the path of the sun on December 21 as it sets precisely
between the opening between the stones on the Winter Solstice. There is a similar view directly across the
stones where the sun lines up on June 21 for the Summer Solstice. We were here just 10 days after the Summer
Solstice, but that was actually a good thing because Stonehenge is closed to tours on that day!
We
spent about half an hour walking around the stones and taking it all in. Unlike Windsor Castle and Bath, I thought that was the perfect
amount of time to spend at Stonehenge and I was ready to head back at that point. It was now 4:45pm, so we walked back to the
shuttle bus pick up location and were met by a huge line of people! Oh my!
All of those people who had been crowded around the stones were now all
leaving at the exact same time as us.
Bus after bus arrived and we were still no where near the front of the
line. I think we waited for 4 or 5 buses
until we could finally board, so that took much more time than we
anticipated. We knew it would be a long
bus ride back to London so we wanted a few minutes to
use the restrooms, but by the time we got back to the visitor center, it was
already 5:10pm. Of course, you
must walk through the souvenir shop upon exiting the shuttle, and there were no
signs pointing us towards the restrooms.
We walked as quickly as possible around the shop to the exit, found an
employee and asked where we could find the restrooms as precious minutes ticked
away.
Mission accomplished, we then had to
find our way back out to the coach bus parking lot, and all the way to the back
of the lot where our bus was parked. We
got back to the bus at 5:25pm, just as Andy was getting ready
to close the doors! Whew! It was such a relief that he waited for us,
and I have a feeling we weren’t the only ones having trouble getting back to
the bus on time! Unfortunately, we
waited until 5:30pm and were still missing two people. Andy arranged to send those people back on
one of the other Evan Evans buses who were due to depart a little later. I can only imagine how stressful it would be
for that couple when they arrived back at our bus’s parking spot and the bus
was gone, with Andy and Russell no where in sight! Hopefully the guide from the other bus had a
way to identify this couple, and hopefully they didn’t leave any of their
belongings on our bus.
As we
left Stonehenge, Andy said we would have a
2-hour drive back to London. After such a long day of touring, it was nice
to have this extended rest break, seated comfortably on an air conditioned
bus. As we were sitting near the front
of the bus, we overheard Andy take a phone call shortly into the trip from the
other tour guide who said he found the couple that missed our bus and they were
all set to return on his bus instead.
We hit a lot of traffic as we were getting closer to London, so Andy offered to make an extra stop in South Kensington near the Gloucester Road tube station. We would be driving passed there on our way to the Victoria Coach Station so it was not out of the way, and it would allow people staying on the west side of the city to get back to their hotels that much sooner. At first, we ignored his offer, but the more I thought about it, I realized we should take advantage of the opportunity. We didn’t have anything pre-planned to do tonight, so if we hopped off the bus at the first stop, we would be just a few blocks from Hyde Park and Kensington Palace. I had considered going there on Tuesday morning before our flight home, but the more I thought about it, I realized it made more sense to check those places off the to-do list tonight while we were already so close by, and then we could do something else tomorrow.
Russell
stopped the bus on a street corner across from the Gloucester Road tube station at 7:30pm. We had officially spent 6 hours on that bus
today, but amazingly, it did not feel as overwhelming as it sounds. We really enjoyed our day with Evan Evans
Tours. Yes, we felt rushed in Windsor and in Bath. Yes, we wished we could spend more time at
each of the attractions. Yes, we spent
the same amount of time on that bus as we did off the bus exploring each
destination. But we knew what we were
signing up for when we booked this tour, and we knew that if we wanted to see Windsor Castle, Bath, and Stonehenge in one day, then it would make
for a very long day with only a limited glimpse at each of those places. With that in mind, we checked off a few more
places on our bucket list and we learned a lot about the history of this
region.
With
the help of Google Maps, we walked up towards Hyde Park. This was a really pretty section of London and I wished we had more time
to explore, but it was late, we were hungry, and we wanted to get to Kensington Palace before dark which meant dinner
had to wait. Hyde Park is huge, but we only had time
to cut through a small section on the western edge.
As we
approached Kensington Palace, we could see lots of signs
hanging on the exterior fence. As it
turned out, we were here on July 1, which was Princess Diana’s birthday, so
there was a tribute set up for her on the fence.
By now,
it was nearly 8pm and the palace had already closed for the
day. We weren’t planning to go inside
anyway, but it would have been nice to walk around the grounds. Unfortunately, the gates were locked and this
was as close as we could get.
We were
starving, so we didn’t stay long and left the park in search of somewhere to
eat dinner. I had seen photos of a pub
nearby here on one of my social media feeds and wanted to eat dinner
there. As the crow flies, it seemed like
it was very close by, but the way the roads go, we had to walk out of our way
out to a main road, then double back in towards the pub. We didn’t know the best way to exit the park,
so we just started walking west away from Kensington Palace. That brought us out to a beautiful tree-lined
street called Kensington Palace Gardens. This street is home to about 20 embassies for
countries like Italy, France, Nepal, Lebanon, and Russia. It felt like walking around Epcot Center in Disneyworld! Country after country lined up next to each
other, and it was fun to try to guess what country was coming up next! That was an unexpected but fun way to pass
the time as we walked towards dinner.
After
nearly a mile of walking, we approached The Churchill Arms pub and I was
immediately obsessed. This building
looked like something out of a fairy tale, with bright flowers covering the
outer walls, and flags flying in the breeze on the roof. There were tons of people standing outside,
enjoying a pint while chatting with their friends.
We went
inside, expecting to see what happened at most of the other pubs we visited
this week… tons of people drinking outside, but no one eating dinner
inside. It was now 8:30pm on a Monday night, so you would
think that was an off-peak time.
Nope! It was sooooo crowded
inside this pub and we didn’t see a single open table. We walked through the whole pub to the back
where there was a waiter with a clipboard for the waiting list and he said it would
be a 30 minute wait to be seated. It
seemed like most people eating here were locals, so I found it kind of weird
that it was so crowded this late on a work night… don’t these people have to go
to work tomorrow morning?? By now, I was
beyond starving and there was no way I could wait 30 minutes to be seated, plus
even longer to get my food, so unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be and we had
to leave. Reviews online say this place
serves good thai food, but I’ll have to come back another time if I want to try
it.
As we
were walking towards Churchill Arms, I noticed another pub called Old Swan
further up the street, so we doubled back to check it out. It was kind of hard to change mentalities
because I was looking forward to thai food for dinner and now we’d be eating
British food… again… but I was way too hungry to start wandering around to find
somewhere different. Old Swan was about
one-third full, so there were enough locals eating here that we figured it must
serve tasty food, but not so crowded that we’d have to wait for a table.
The
bartender told us to sit wherever we wanted, and to come see her at the bar to
place our food and drink orders. I
ordered a cider (of course!) and a steak and ale pie. It was pretty good, but honestly, I was so
hungry that I would have thought a pile of cement tasted good haha
We
finished up dinner around 9:30pm and just headed back to the
hotel for the night. In theory, we could
have gone out to another pub, or explored the neighborhood a little more, or
even walked up to Notting Hill which was just a few blocks away, but we were
tired and still needed to pack up our bags before checking out of the hotel
tomorrow morning. If you remember back
to our first day in London, I mentioned that DH had a
mission to visit as many pubs as possible.
The qualification for if the pub “counted” in our tally was if we each
had one drink at the pub, so the grand total for our 5 days in London came out
to 11 pubs! Not too shabby!
Luckily,
we were very close by the Notting Hill Gate Underground Station, so we hopped
on the Tube to get back to the hotel.
Fitbit Daily Summary… Steps: 19,502, Miles: 9.41, Flights of Stairs: 13 (not bad for a day when we spent 6 hours on a bus!!)
One of
the things we definitely wanted to see in London was the changing of the
guards. When I started to research the
logistics, tons of websites and guide books recommended arriving at Buckingham
Palace several hours in advance for the hopes at finding a good spot to stand,
but you would only have a view of a small portion of the ceremony and it
sounded exhausting and boring to stand around in one spot for all that time for
very little reward. I came across a tour
through Fun London Tours where they guide you around London to be at the right spot at the
right time to see the various parts of the changing of the guards
ceremony. Here is the tour description
from their website:
“This
is the London walking tour which will ensure
you are in the best position possible to see the extraordinary Changing the
Guard ceremony while avoiding the crowds at the gates of BuckinghamPalace. Rather than standing still for
hours, we see various stages of the ceremony, including the inspection, Old
Guard, New Guard, Palaces, and even march alongside the Guards and Ceremonial
Bands!
Our
tour guides have the experience, knowledge and humour to make sure you leave
with an enviable set of pictures, an insight into what is going on, an anecdote
or two, and most importantly, a memory which will last forever.
We
are endorsed by http://www.changing-guard.com and so have the backing of the most
knowledgeable people out there. Sadly, a
great number of people go to see this world famous ceremony and leave
disappointed. They stand at the gates of BuckinghamPalace and wait uncomfortably for the
action to happen, but are unaware that they have missed the majority of the
pomp, ceremony, music and marching that takes place elsewhere. And that is why
a Fun London Guide is invaluable in getting
you around.
If
you like a fast paced tour, with plenty of action, excitement and fun, come on
this walk. In order to stay ahead of the crowds we do have to move quickly at
times – at one point we will even be marching alongside the band! We will also
encounter at least one flight of steps so unfortunately it is the only one of
our tours which is not suitable for people with walking difficulties.
Please
note we will not stand near the gates of BuckinghamPalace on this tour. It is
unfortunately impractical to take a group there and wait for two or more hours
packed in like sardines in a can, but we can guarantee the tour will be a far
more enjoyable and informative experience!”
As it
worked out, we were planning to go to Buckingham Palace to watch the ceremony on Sunday
(it was the only morning we had free after booking our other tours!), so that
meant we could take this tour on the day that also included the Change of the
Lifeguard ceremony. The tour cost £20
per person, which was a little pricey considering we usually take free tours,
but we decided it was worth it to avoid wasting our very limited time and to
ensure we would actually see part of the ceremony.
My
original plan was that we would go out to lunch after the tour, then go to
Westminster Abbey for the 3pm Evensong Service. Much like St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey
charges a hefty admission fee if you want to go inside and tour the
church. The one way around this is to attend
a service, which is free and open to the public. I liked the idea of going to the 3pm Evensong Service because the
service is only about an hour long and features talented choirs singing the
prayers. It gets wonderful reviews on
Trip Advisor and seemed like a unique way to see the inside of this iconic
church.
That was our game plan until our full-day walking tour on Friday when DH learned about the MLB London Series baseball game. He is a huge Yankees fan and he really wanted to go to one of the two games and see them play in London. The first game was last night when we already had tickets for Les Mis, so he knew that if he was going to the game, it would have to be on Sunday. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of going to a baseball game instead of Westminster Abbey because we do see most of the Yankees games when they play the Giants or A’s in California, but we won’t have another opportunity to go inside Westminster Abbey. After a lot of back and forth, DH decided to look online and if he could find tickets, we would go to the baseball game. On Saturday night after we left Les Mis, DH went on the England Stub Hub site and he found 2 tickets for Sunday game! So it was official, we were going to the Yankees vs. Red Sox game in London. It’s a good thing we both had extra Yankess tshirts packed for the New York leg of our trip so we’d have something to wear to the game! Haha
We woke
up bright and early on Sunday morning, had our usual breakfast downstairs at
the hotel, then took the Tube to the Piccadilly Circus station. When we exited the station, we saw a sight
rarely seen by tourists… a completely deserted Piccadilly Circus! It was 8:30am on a Sunday and there were only
a handful of people walking around, most of whom turned out to be other people
on our tour!
We were
a little early so we sat on the steps of the fountain until 9am when a group of tour guides
arrived. Until then, we had noticed more
and more people milling around the sidewalks, but we didn’t know if these
people were all on our tour or if they just happened to be exploring Piccadilly Circus. When the guides arrived, nearly 100 people
all gathered together to check in for the tour!
Holy moly! I thought we were only
supposed to have a maximum of 25 people on the tour with us?! It turned out that there were 4 guides and we
would all be split up into smaller groups for the tour. We were all going to be seeing the same things
and we’d all be at the same places at the same time, but there would only be
about 25 people listening to what each guide said. That wasn’t exactly what I expected, so I was
a bit skeptical at this point. The lead
guide called out each party individually and assigned them to one of the 4
guides. We stood there waiting to hear
our name, as we were watching the guides start introducing themselves to the
people joining their group. Finally, the
lead guide called our name LAST out of all the people there! My guess is she must have called us out in
the reverse order of when we registered for the tour or something like
that. We were assigned to be with the
guide named Jess, so we walked over to his group and kind of felt like we were
intruding at that point because it had been about 15 minutes total since the
first person’s name was called.
One by
one, each group left Piccadilly Circus to start the tour until we were
the only group left. Jess led us down Regent Street, and as soon as we passed Milo’s, I knew exactly where we
were. Sure enough, Jess stopped us near
the Duke of York statue to tell us the same story and sing us the same song
that we heard on our tour on Friday. I
guess that song is very popular with the tour guides in London because they don’t seem to mind
a bit of humiliation as they sing it to us!
As we
walked across The Mall, we noticed it was closed to vehicular traffic. Jess said they do that on certain Sundays so
people can walk and ride their bikes.
We
continued walking towards the Horse Guards Parade for the first ceremony of the
tour.
You can
see several groups of people around the ropes up ahead. That was the other tour groups in our larger
group since we were the last to arrive.
Jess
brought us over to an open section of the ropes and we lined up to wait for the
horses to arrive.
A few
minutes later, we saw the horses marching down the same path we had just
walked, then they entered the middle of the ropes. Jess explained that these were the new guards
reporting for duty.
The
horses marched around the perimeter and then lined up on the right side of the
space.
And
then they waited… and waited… and waited some more!
The old
guards who had been on duty were supposed to come over this way, but for some
reason, they were delayed. Jess said
this was EXTREMELY rare and he has never seen this happen before! At some point, one of the guards went through
the archway to see what was causing the hold up.
Finally,
about 10 minutes late, the old guards marched out on their horses.
They
lined up on the left side of the space, facing towards the new guards.
Once
they were all lined up, Jess said we needed to move along to our next
stop. He said the guards would stay in
this position and not move for about 20 minutes, so it’s not like we would be
missing out on much by leaving early haha
Jess
led us through a short cut through St. James’s Park. Even though we had walked through this park
already on our tour on Friday, we still appreciated seeing it again because the
flowers looked lovely!
Once we
reached The Mall, Jess told us to line up along the sidewalk near Marlborough Road. He took this time to explain a bit more of
the history behind these ceremonies, and then, since the guards seemed to be
running behind, he took some more time to explain how the royal family gets
their names. These little tidbits of
information were so interesting to learn about because it isn’t something I had
thought about before. There was much
debate over whether Prince Charles will take over as King when his mother
either passes away or retires from her responsibilities as Queen. If he does become King, Jess said he can
choose his regnal name from any of his names: Charles, Philip, Arthur, or
George. Another possibility is that they
will skip over Prince Charles and name Prince William as the next king, but
Jess suspected that was unlikely to happen and that Prince William would have
to wait a bit longer before taking the throne.
I just found all of this stuff fascinating, and it was a good way to
kill some time before these guys arrived…
These
were the old guards that we just saw finish their shift back at the Horse
Guards Parade, and they were bringing the horses back to the barracks.
About 5
minutes later, we heard the band marching towards The Mall from St. James’s
Palace. I was so excited to finally see
those famous black fuzzy bearskin hats in person!
Now is
when the fun part started… Earlier, Jess had warned us that right after we see
the band turn onto The Mall, he would say “Go!”. That was our cue to follow him on the
sidewalk, marching in step with the marching band towards Buckingham Palace. He had warned us that we would need to move
quickly to keep up with the band, and he was not kidding! I was shocked at how fast that band marched
while playing their tunes. It was
somewhat crowded, with lots of people lined up along the sidewalk to watch the
band, and even more people briskly marching up the sidewalk to keep up with the
band. Remember those 100 people on our
tour? We they were all right there with
us on the sidewalk, plus several other tour companies too, so it was impossible
to take a decent photo. I held my camera
up above the crowd, aimed in the general direction of the band, and clicked
away. This was the best I could get…
Notice
all the other people doing exactly what I was doing?
It was mayhem! And while all that was happening, we still had to keep track of Jess so we wouldn’t miss out on the rest of our tour! We were practically running to keep up with him, but we could at least slow down a bit when he turned off into St. James’s Park again.
Our
next stop was over on Birdcage Walk where we would see another band march out
in front of the new guards for Buckingham Palace. There were already a few people lined up
along the fences here so we had to squeeze in to get a good view.
Here
they come!
Their
marching is lined up perfectly!
After
that brief break, it was time to chase Jess again as we moved over towards Buckingham Palace.
Holy
moly! Look at the hundreds of people
packed in and lining the sidewalks! They
must have been standing there for hours and only now just got to see the guards
arrive, meanwhile we had been up close with several sets of guards and bands
for the last 2 hours. I’d say we
definitely had a better morning than these people did! We could see the band and the guards marching
towards the Palace, but Jess said it was far too crowded for our group to go in
that direction. Instead, we turned right
near the gardens around the traffic circle.
Once we
found a spot along the path in the garden, we could not see the guards anymore,
but we did have a beautiful view of Buckingham Palace and the Victoria Memorial in
the gardens.
We both thought this tour was worth every penny (…or should I say every pence!). As we were promised by the tour description, Jess put us in the right spot at the right time to see several components to the changing of the guards ceremony, and we avoided the large crowds of people as much as possible. When the tour ended, Jess said we could stick around and try to get a view of the changing of the guards in the courtyard in front of Buckingham Palace, but we decided not to tackle that chaos and that we had seen enough during the tour.
We had
a little bit of time before our lunch reservations, so we walked back through
St. James’s Park. I just couldn’t get
enough of these colorful flowers!
I
noticed these silver plaques in the sidewalk so I Googled it. These are placed along a 14-mile path
connecting London’s iconic locations between Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London. The path was created to celebrate the Queen’s
25th anniversary in 1977.
We
walked over to Westminster Abbey to take a photo. We did pass by here quickly during our tour
on Friday, but we were across the street then and couldn’t get close so today
we were able to spend a little more time examining the architecture and taking
better photos. We wouldn’t get to go
inside so a quick view from the outside would have to suffice!
A few
weeks before our trip, I made a reservation for lunch at the Sanctuary
House. The restaurant gets great reviews
online, and was located near Westminster Abbey so we could go to the Evensong
Service after lunch. Of course, we now
knew that we would not be attending that service, but we decided to keep our
lunch reservations. They offer a special
Sunday Roast menu, in addition to their usual menu with lots of traditional
British specialties.
I loved
the look of the exterior of the building.
We
arrived at 12pm for our reservation and the restaurant was nearly
empty. The hostess took us over to a
table for 4 next to the window in a quiet section towards the back of the
restaurant. We looked over the menu and
considered getting the Sunday roasts but decided against it because we were not
hungry enough for all of that food this early in the day. Instead, we ordered the tasting board, which
included 3 mini pies paired with 3 ales, and we ordered one extra steak pie so
we could each have 2 pies.
We planned
to share the ales with DH drinking most of it, and I ordered a cider for
myself. The waiter offered to bring out
the drinks first so we could get started on that, and he would bring out the
pies when they were ready. Sounds good
to us!
A little
while later, the waiter brought this to the table. We looked at him a bit confused because
surely he knew he had already brought out our ales. He said he got mixed up but not to worry
about it, so now we had more than enough to drink with our Sunday lunch!
All 3
of the mini pies were delicious, with a good ratio of filling to crust. I also liked how they marked the top with a
flower, a cow, and something else (I can’t remember what it was and it’s not
clear in the photo) so we could identify the fillings.
The service was very good and we enjoyed our fancy lunch here, but we agreed that we would have liked it better for dinner when we had a bigger appetite. We finished our meal by 12:45pm and decided to make our way towards the baseball game even though it was still very early. It was going to take about an hour to get there, and the game didn’t start until 3pm, but we could spend some time walking around the stadium before the game started.
We
asked one of the agents working in the Underground station how to get to the
Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. It turned
out to be extremely easy! We needed to
take the Jubilee line to the Stratford Station, and the fare was included in
the travel cards loaded on our Oyster Cards because it was within Zone 1 and
2. I had assumed we’d need to pay extra
for our ride out to the stadium so that was a nice surprise. Once we got on the train, there were tons of
other people wearing Yankees and Red Sox shirts so we knew we were in the right
place, and we all followed each other when we arrived at the Stratford Station
to get to the stadium.
It was
about a 10 minute walk from the station to the stadium, but it was obvious
where to go because we could see the stadium out in the distance. We arrived at 2pm so it was after the initial
rush to enter and there was no wait to go through security. There are no regulation baseball stadiums in London, so this game was being played
at a soccer stadium built for the 2012 Olympics.
DH was
super excited to be here as it is the first time an MLB series has been played
in Europe! For anyone interested in going, they are
repeating the series in 2020 with the Chicago Cubs vs. St. Louis
Cardinals. We actually have good friends
out here in the Bay Area who are big Cubs fans and are seriously considering
flying out for that game next summer!
We
entered the stadium and walked around checking out the vendors. We had seen people wearing really cool shirts
in London this morning that they bought at yesterday’s game, so DH
wanted to buy one. We found the official
booth selling MLB London Series merchandise, but DH didn’t like any of those
shirts. We later found out that the
shirts we saw in London were purchased from private
vendors outside of the stadium, although we never saw those vendors when we
entered or exited the stadium.
When we
got to our seats, they were starting some of the pre-game festivities out on
the field.
They
brought out giant flags to sing both the USA and the Great Britain national anthems.
Since the game was held at a soccer stadium, the field dimensions were very short compared to the standard MLB stadiums that these players are used to playing in. Last night’s game turned into a homerun derby because the final score was 17 to 13 (Yankees won). As you can imagine, that lead to an extremely long game. The game lasted 4 hours and 42 minutes, making it only 3 minutes shorter than the longest 9-inning game in MLB History (in 2006, coincidentally also between the Yankees and Red Sox!). Today’s game was a similar story, with a final score of 12 to 8 (Yankees won again), but luckily it only lasted for 4 hours and 24 minutes! That was still a very long game, and we ended up leaving after the 7th inning so we’d have time for the rest of our plans for the day. In the end, I’m glad we went to the game as it was a fun experience, even if it meant missing out on more quality time in Central London.
We took
the Tube back to our hotel to get changed for the evening. I must say that something I really missed
about cruising was the logistics of getting ready for the evening. It is so convenient to ride an elevator back
to our deck and walk a few steps down the hall to our cabin to shower and get
changed for dinner, as opposed to taking some form of public transit to travel
across the city to get back to our hotel, and then needing to take more public
transit to get to our evening activity.
Even with conveniently located hotels, it still always took a long time
and really made me miss that aspect of cruising.
Once we
were ready for the night, we took the Tube over to the Aldgate Station. We had reservations for dinner at Mayfair
Chippy at The City location because we had to stay on schedule and this place
got good reviews on Trip Advisor so it was just easier to plan a reservation
here as opposed to aimlessly wandering the streets looking for a good
restaurant. This restaurant was in the
business district near lots of high-rise office buildings, so it was not
surprising that most restaurants were closed on a Sunday night and the streets
were somewhat deserted. When we got to
Mayfair Chippy, it was actually very crowded and nearly every table was occupied,
so it’s a good thing we had a reservation!
We were seated immediately and it didn’t take long to look over the menu
because we planned to order their specialty… fish and chips! What else would you order at a chippy? The food came out quickly and everything was
crisp and tasty.
After
dinner, we walked a few short blocks over to the Sky Garden for our evening activity. On Thursday, we visited the Sky Garden from the reservations I made on
their website 3 weeks in advance, but that kind of ticketing is only available
during the day. At night, the Sky Garden features a bar in the main open
space called the Sky Pod Bar. You can
make reservations on their website starting 2 months in advance (way better
than just 3 weeks in advance for the daytime slots!), and you can either
request a table or just sign up for standing room around the bar. There are also a few restaurants in there,
but we were not interested in eating dinner there. I made reservations for the bar for 9:15pm so we could watch the sunset
and then see the nighttime skyline light up after dark.
The Sky
Pod Bar has a dress code at night and they do not permit flip flops or shorts,
so we made sure to be dressed appropriately when we got changed at the
hotel. When we arrived at the hostess
stand in the downstairs lobby, there was a group of people who were arguing
with another hostess because she denied them entry because of what they were
wearing. I didn’t realize they would
enforce the dress code so thoroughly, but those people were wearing shorts and
flip flops so I guess it really did matter!
We went
through the same thorough security check that we did on Thursday afternoon,
then took the elevator up to the 35th floor to the Sky Garden. We checked in again with the hostess at the
Sky Pod Bar and she said we were free to walk around and order drinks at the
bar, but we needed to leave after an hour and a half. It also said that on our booking
confirmation, and that wasn’t a problem because we didn’t plan to stay that
long anyway.
I was
drawn towards this gorgeous view of The Shard.
I tried to go outside on the balcony to take a better photo but the
doors are locked at night and you need to stay inside the main Sky Garden complex.
We took
a look at the menu at the bar and were surprised that the beer and cider prices
were quite reasonable. We each got a
pint and took it to walk around and check out the views. That’s why I didn’t want to book a table… I
knew we’d want to wander around while we were here.
We
timed our visit perfectly to watch the sunset.
The views from up here were so amazing!
It was hard to avoid the glare off the windows, but I did my best!
We
stayed at the Sky Garden for about 45 minutes, then
found our way back to the elevator to leave.
Back down on the street, we caught this view of The Shard peaking out
down the alley.
Before heading
back to the hotel, we decided to take a detour to see the Tower Bridge lit up at night. We didn’t get to see it on Thursday night on
the walking tour, and we were so close by so why not? We walked down to the Thames in search of a walkway along
the water. On the way, we caught another
great view of The Shard.
We
could not figure out how to access the walking path because the gates near the
Tower of London were locked, so we walked down along the Tower Pier to get as
close as we could to the bridge.
I love
that there was a red double-decker bus going across the middle of the bridge
right as I took this photo!
Mission accomplished, we turned back to
exit the pier and caught this view of The Shard and a neighboring building lit
up for Pride month. A beautiful end to
another wonderful day in London!
One of
the things we wanted to do the most during our time in London was to see a musical on the West End. We are big fans of Broadway musicals and have
had a season subscription to see the traveling Broadway shows at home for 5
years, so there was no question that we wanted to see a show while visiting London. After we booked our flights in October, one
of the first things we did was to look up which shows would be running in London on the dates we were
there. Ironically, a lot of the shows
were ones that had come to San Jose last season or were due to come
this season, so we didn’t have a lot of options. We decided to buy tickets to Les Mis because
we both love that show and hadn’t seen it in many years, plus we thought it
would be a great show to feature the talented singers performing on a West End stage. We bought tickets directly though the box
office website for seats in the front row of the Upper Circle (the third floor balcony). The reviews of these seats said there was a
limited view and you had to lean forward to see the stage, but these were among
the lowest priced seats in the theater so we decided to take our chances. It is better to be in the front row and lean
forward than be in the back row of the theater and have a tall person in front
of you blocking the stage, or being so far back you need binoculars to see
anything, right? As luck would have it,
in March we learned the list of shows coming to Broadway San Jose for the
2019-2020 season and sure enough… Les Mis is on the list! So now we will be seeing it twice but at
least it’s a show we both enjoy!
Another
thing we wanted to do was take a tour of the Houses of Parliament. I did some research on their website
(www.parliament.uk) and learned that it only costs an extra £7 to take a
90-minute guided tour (£26.50) as opposed to the audio guide (£19.50), so it
was a no-brainer that we would try to get tickets to the guided tour. We always get so much more out of the tour
when we have a live guide to interact with as opposed to trying to focus on the
audio guide. Visitors can take tours of
the Houses on Parliament on Saturdays throughout the year, and on select
weekdays when Parliament is not in session but those dates didn’t align with
our trip so I knew Saturday was our only choice. The tickets are released on their website
about 5 months in advance, but luckily these are not in as high a demand as
tickets to the Eiffel Tower and there were still lots of
time slots available when I looked in early February. We bought nonrefundable tickets for the 9am tour.
After
another good breakfast at the hotel, we took the Tube to the Westminster
Station. Our tickets said to go straight
to the Cromwell Green Visitor Entrance and that we needed to arrive 20 minutes
before our tour to allow time to go through security. I wasn’t really sure exactly where that
entrance was located, but there were lots of signs along the sidewalk pointing
us in the right direction. Soon enough,
we saw about 30 people standing in line, holding paper tickets that looked like
ours, so we got in line.
While
we waited, we admired the view of the back of Westminster Abbey.
I’m
really not sure why they force you to arrive 20 minutes early for the 9am tour because the building did
not open until 9am, so we were standing outside at 8:40am for no reason. We would have appreciated the extra 20 minutes
to sleep! When they finally started
letting us in, we showed our tickets, then proceeded through security. Not surprisingly, this security check was
very strict, even asking us to remove our watches. After clearing security, they gave us passes to
wear around our necks indicating that we were approved visitors, then they
divided us into groups for the tour.
When the guide had about 30 people in their group, they took everyone
and started the tour, and then a new guide would start to gather people for
their tour. As luck would have it, we
ended up with only 16 people in our group because there was a lull in people
finishing the security check.
Our guide’s
name was Gemma, and she explained that no photos were allowed during the tour
except in the first 2 rooms, Westminster Hall and St. Stephen’s Hall.
It was
really hard to get a good photo in Westminster Hall due to the dim lighting and
the vast size of the room, but I took a photo of the stained glass windows…
These
doors lead into St. Stephen’s Hall. The
art installation was designed in 2016 to mark 150 years since the campaign for
women’s votes began.
I know
this isn’t the best quality photo but Gemma did not stop walking to give us a
chance to take a photo so I had to click while walking. This is St. Stephen’s Hall…
We
weren’t allowed to take any photos beyond that point. Gemma took us through some very grand lobbies
and meeting halls, into the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and we got
to see a bunch of rooms that are not accessible to people using the audio
guides. She did a wonderful job of
explaining the ins and outs of British government, and she was able to answer
all of our questions along the way. We
both thought this tour was well worth the cost of admission, and we learned a
lot of tidbits that we hadn’t know about before. There were a lot of tours happening
simultaneously so sometimes it was timed well that as we finished in one room,
another group entered when we were leaving, but sometimes there were multiple
groups in the same room making it kind of loud and hard to hear Gemma. We did notice that all of the other groups
were much larger than ours, so we definitely got lucky to have a small group. We started our tour at 9:15am and ended back at Westminster
Hall at 10:50am, so it was a 95 minute tour.
On our
way out, we were able to get one last photo in Westminster Hall…
I took
a few photos outside in the garden in front of Westminster Hall. These photos would look much better without
the scaffolding, but I guess that’s just another reason to plan a re-do trip to
London in the future!
When we
exited out into Parliament Square, there were thousands of people
in the streets! It was crazy! We asked one of the men standing on the
street what was happening and he explained what the rally was for, but
unfortunately I really can’t remember what he said. Despite the number of people at the rally, it
was all very peaceful and we never felt unsafe or anything like that (although
we did guard our wallets in case of pickpockets!).
The
statue of Winston Churchill was overlooking the crowd…
So, do
you remember how hot it was when we were in Paris? The high temperatures so far in London were in the mid-70’s so it had
been warm but relatively pleasant… that is, until today! Today’s high temperature was 87 degrees! It was a brutally hot day for London standards and we needed an
indoor activity to fill some time in the afternoon. We decided to walk over to the British Museum in hopes that it was air
conditioned. We considered taking the
Tube, but there was no direct line from Westminster to the British Museum, and it was only a mile and a
half to walk there so we decided to take a leisurely walk and see some new
parts of the city on the way.
As we
approached the Horse Guards Parade, there was a bit crowd outside so we crossed
the street to see what was happening.
We
couldn’t resist another touristy photo with one of the Guards.
Apparently
our timing was perfect because they were about to start the changing of the
guards ceremony! We actually already had
a tour booked to see this tomorrow morning, and we assumed that guide would
explain everything that was happening, so today we just watched for a few
minutes.
Out on
the other side, there was a large crowd gathered so we stood behind them to see
what we could over their heads.
It’s always fun when you come across something unexpected like that (although I suppose this ceremony happens on a schedule so we could have planned to be there intentionally haha).
Continuing
on with our walk, we wandered up a side street to see this pub with a Sherlock
Holmes theme. It was a little too early
in the day to grab a pint or we may have gone inside, but we just settled for a
photo of the pretty exterior!
It was
getting warmer and warmer by the minute, so we picked up a quick take away
sandwich for lunch and walked the rest of the way to the British Museum. When we arrived, we went through a security
tent on the outside of the building, then continued up the front steps to enter
the museum.
Just
like I did for the Louvre, I made a map while we were still at home to locate some
of the most significant works in the British Museum. First up on that map was the Rosetta Stone, a
stone slab inscribed in 196 BC with 3 languages used to decipher ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphics. Understandably,
it was housed in a glass case, but that made it really hard to take a good
photo of it. There were probably 100
people crowded all around the case so we waited until some people left to get a
little closer to look at the details of the inscriptions.
I have
no idea what this says, but it’s incredible that you can still clearly see each
character over 2200 years after it was etched.
We kept
walking through a few smaller rooms until we got to a large open room at the
far side of the museum to see the sculptures of the Parthenon. It was kind of funny for me to see these
items here in London because I have visited the
Acropolis in Athens, but I certainly couldn’t get
this close to the stone sculptures when they were mounted on the top of the
Acropolis!
Up next,
we went towards the back of the museum to see Hoa Hakananai’a, better known as
the Easter
Island
statue. It is definitely on my bucket
list to visit Easter Island and see these statues in person, but who knows if or
when that will ever happen, so for now, I was excited to see this statue in the
museum.
I never
realized these statues have engravings on their backside too!
Next,
we went upstairs to see a few other key things that I did not take photos of,
and finally, the Mummy of Katebet. This
exhibit actually had several mummies on display, and there was an interesting explanation
of the mummification process hanging on one of the walls.
Within
seconds of entering the museum, it was obvious that we weren’t the only ones
who wanted to stay cool with an indoor activity today. It was very crowded and that made it hard to
really enjoy our time here at a leisurely pace.
We found ourselves just wanting to quickly see each of the things on my
list so we could get out of the museum and away from all the people! We spent about an hour here, then decided
we’d had enough and were ready to move on.
The British Museum is filled with hundreds of
artifacts and fascinating pieces of history.
I loved that it wasn’t an art museum filled with endless walls of
paintings, and I think it deserves more than an hour of our time so I look
forward to visiting here again if I ever return to London.
Before
we left, we caught a great view overlooking the Great Court…
We left
the museum around 2pm and wow was it hot outside! We were less than a mile from our hotel, so
we started walking in that direction. We
had a few more hours before dinner but we were getting hungry, so we stopped
into a Caffe Nero for our own version of afternoon tea. They had amazingly cold air conditioning and
comfy couches near the windows in the front so we plopped down to enjoy our
snack and some people watching.
Eventually,
we knew it was time to move along, so we walked the rest of the way back to our
hotel to get changed for the evening.
Remember those unlimited ride passes we had for the City Cruises Thames River sightseeing boat? Well they were due to expire at the end of
the day today and we had only used them that one initial time. We had plenty of time before our dinner
reservations, so on a whim, we decided to go down to Tower Pier and ride the
boat back in the opposite direction from how we did it last time. We had to hustle a little bit, but we made it
to Tower Pier just in time for the 3:15pm boat. It was super hot outside and we were dressed
nicely for our evening plans, so opted to sit inside on the lower level. As I suspected on Thursday, it was basically
impossible to take a good photo down here.
We sat on the starboard side of the boat, so any photos of the port side
were obstructed by other people and the frame around the windows, and all the
photos I tried to take out our windows had a glare. I gave up on photos pretty quickly and we
just enjoyed the ride as much as we could.
The commentary was exactly verbatim what we heard on Thursday, even
though the speaker was a different person.
Oh well, at least it was free!
I was
hoping there would be air conditioning downstairs, but no such luck. The glass windows created a greenhouse effect,
so it was very hot down there. We tried
using our USB-powered fans, but after about 15 minutes, they both overheated
and stopped working! I didn’t even think
that was possible! Haha Notice how you
can see the 2 blades on my fan? That’s
because it was barely spinning at this point.
The
boat docked at Westminster Pier around 4pm, and our dinner reservations
were about a mile away at 5:15pm. It was too early to go to dinner, so we kept
our eyes open for a fun pub to get a quick drink. Right around the corner from Westminster
Pier, we found The Red Lion Pub. That
was easy!
This
pub has a really interesting history, which was explained on this plaque next
to the bar.
It was
fairly busy here given it was a Saturday afternoon, but we saw a couple getting
ready to leave so I waited for their table as DH got us a few drinks from the
bar… no surprise that it was a cider for me and a beer for DH! We really enjoyed the pub vibe throughout London. It was usually very clean, the décor was
charming, the staff was friendly, and they usually had a good selection on the
taps. Yet another reason that we loved London!
Back to
the planning phase for a moment… When we bought our tickets for Les Mis, our
confirmation instructed us to pick up the tickets at will call between 5:30pm and 7pm on the night of the show. The show started at 7:30pm, so if we went at
5:30pm, that would make for a rushed dinner to get back to the theater in time
to use the restrooms and get to our seats all the way upstairs. Instead, we decided to go to dinner first and
make sure to get to the theater before 7pm when the box office
closed. I wanted to find somewhere that
took reservations so we wouldn’t need to worry about a long wait for a table,
and I also wanted to find somewhere with a good pre-theater price fixe
menu. I looked on Open Table at all of
the restaurants within walking distance of the Queens Theater, and we narrowed
down the menus until we found the one we liked best. That led us to Estiatorio Milos, a Greek
restaurant that focused on imported Greek fish.
They offered a 2-course price fixe for £20 or 3-courses for £24, and all
of the options looked really good. We
made our reservation for 5:15pm to give us an hour and a half
to eat, and then 15 minutes to walk to the theater.
Milos
was located in a beautiful stone building, right near the statue to the Duke of
York.
We were
seated immediately at a table along the windows at the front of the restaurant,
conveniently located right next to an air conditioning vent!! I was in heaven and I hadn’t even tasted a
bite of food haha The restaurant has a
modern elegant atmosphere with floor to ceiling windows, white tablecloths and
funky globe-shaped lighting fixtures.
This
restaurant specializes in Greek fish, and they had this huge display in the
back next to the kitchen with all sorts of fresh fish on ice.
I loved
the look of this huge wine cellar on the lower level of the restaurant (I only
found it because it was next to the restrooms haha)
We
looked at the menu and did something we rarely do… we both ordered the exact
same thing!
For our
starters, we got the Poikilia, which was a sampler platter of several spreads
including tzatziki, hummus, tarama (the consistency of hummus but made with
fish roe instead of chick peas), and tyropitaki (similar to spanikopita), all
served with fresh warm pita bread and raw vegetables to dip into the dips.
We
weren’t expecting such a large portion size!
Had we known, we would have had one of us order the starter and main
course and shared this starter, and the other would have ordered a main and a
dessert to share. Everything was
delicious and we agreed it was a shame that we couldn’t take any of it home in
a doggy bag because we couldn’t finish it all and still leave room for our main
course.
For our
main course, we both ordered the grilled lamb chops, served with Greek fried
potatoes.
We were pleasantly impressed with Milos. The service was excellent, the food was very tasty, the ambiance was classy, and the price was right!
After
dinner, we walked over to the Queens Theater to pick up our tickets.
When we
see the traveling Broadway shows in San Jose, they have signs just like this
in the lobby for each show so we always take a photo with it. It was fun to see a similar sign here in London and we knew we needed to take
our usual photo!
It was
a little annoying that we had to arrive at the theater by 7pm because they didn’t start
letting people go up to their seats until 7:15pm. When they did let us in, we went up to the
third level to find our seats.
I
always enjoy when the stage exposes the pit below it and you can see the
musicians, as a reminder that this is live music and not a pre-recording.
In
those photos, you can see that there was a velvet padded arm rest along the top
of the safety railing. Yes, we did have
to lean forward to see the stage, but at least it was soft and padded and relatively
comfortable. We actually could get away
with leaning back in our seats when the actors were upstage, but we definitely
had to lean forwards when they moved all the way downstage near the pit. The leaning forward wasn’t as big a deal as I
expected it to be, but unfortunately, the lighting rig that was mounted
directly below our seats gave off A LOT of heat. Perhaps, had we seen the show on a day that
didn’t reach a high of 87 degrees, then we wouldn’t have noticed the heat from
the lights. We were not that lucky, and
we could definitely feel the heat. In
fact, I could feel the difference between when the scene was darker and the
lights were turned off versus when the lights were on. I know the theater was due to be renovated a
few weeks after we were there, so I hope they did something to change the
location of that lighting rig!
Despite
all of that, the show was phenomenal! It
was everything I wanted a musical on the West End to be, and more! The actor who played Jean Valjean stole the
show, but really everyone was excellent and the level of talent was quite
impressive. It was an experience we will
never forget!
On my
first day visiting a new city, I usually like to take some
kind of tour to get an overview of where the main attractions are located and
learn about of history about that city.
Since we arrived in London mid-day yesterday, I hadn’t
planned any tours in case of unexpected delays.
As it turned out, we actually covered quite a lot of ground in the
two-thirds of a day that we spent in London yesterday, but the original
plan was to treat today as our first full day and therefore I wanted to book an
overview tour. I did a few searches
online and as soon as I found the Strawberry Tours website, I knew my search
was complete. Strawberry Tours offers a free 6-hour walking
tour covering pretty much all the main sites on the north side of the
river. I have seen free walking tours
that last one, two, and even three hours, but SIX hours?!? In my experience, that is completely unheard
of!! The website warned that we would
cover around 10km (over 6 miles) in about 7 hours with a 1 hour lunch break in
the middle. That sounded a bit daunting,
but when you broke it down it only came out to one mile per hour, so it wasn’t
really all that much. Here is the tour
description from the Strawberry Tours website:
“If
your stay in London is shorter than you’d like it to be, but you want to leave
with the feeling that you have seen the most important sites of this
magnificent old town, then our Free London in a Day Tour is definitely the tour
for you.
We’ll
get going at 9.30 in the morning from Tower Hill, and we’ll spend all morning
exploring the City of London, the root of it all, Londinium,
the place where the Romans settled two thousand years ago. It is here where
trade, economic power, and the middle classes have thrived since the times of
William the Conqueror nearly a thousand years ago. Walk through the oldest
streets of London as you gaze up to some of its
most modern buildings. Be amazed by St. Paul’s Cathedral, and hear about the
man who built it and rebuilt all of London after the Great Fire of 1666.
Learn about some of the most powerful corporations in history, such as The East
India Company, in the place were capitalism was born.
At
around 13.00 will stop for an optional traditional Pub Lunch, where you can
chat further to the guide, and enjoy a fish and chips with a pint of good old
ale.
After
lunch will venture into the City of Westminster, the place where political
power has been held for the last 700 years, and certainly the most eccentric
and picturesque area in town. SeeBuckinghamPalace, where the Queen resides, and
St. James’ Palace, built by Henry the VIII for his second wife Anne Bolene.
Hear all the Royal gossip and learn about the history of the most popular Royal
Family in the world. Walk to the houses of Parliament and see where the real power
is held as you take your picture in front of the Big Ben.”
They
also offer just tours of just the City of London separately from Westminster,
so we could pick one or the other and not commit a full day to this tour, but
this just seemed like too good a deal to be true and we couldn’t resist the
chance to see all of these things in one tour.
It was a bit of a gamble because if we had a bad tour guide, that would
totally ruin the day, but we took our chances and signed up on their website.
On
Friday morning, we woke up and got ready for the day, then went downstairs to
the basement of the hotel for breakfast.
When we checked in yesterday, they asked us to pick what time we wanted
to eat breakfast. They had a few little
cards with half-hour time slots from 7am until 9am, so we picked 8am for Friday morning. Each day, we could pick up a different time
card for tomorrow’s breakfast or we could just reuse the one from the day
before if we wanted to go at the same time.
The breakfast room was very small with only 5 or 6 tables, so it made
sense that they needed to regulate the flow of traffic so there would be enough
seats for everyone and so the kitchen staff could keep up with the food orders. We arrived at 7:52am, which turned out to be very
lucky because the kitchen had already finished cooking breakfast for the people
who arrived at 7:30am and we were the first to arrive and place our
order for the next round. They actually
did run out of tables because some of the 7:30 people hadn’t left yet when all
of the 8am people arrived, so it was good that we were a few minutes early and
we learned to use that strategy every day!
I knew
that breakfast was included with the nightly price of our hotel, but all of the
reviews indicated that we would get a typical English breakfast with bacon,
eggs, beans, and a grilled tomato. I did
not anticipate having any options, so I was shocked when we arrived and had a
full menu to choose from!
Sure,
it wasn’t IHOP, but it was way more than I was expecting and we were
thrilled! I ordered the special sandwich
with a side of scrambled eggs, and DH ordered fried eggs over medium. While our food was cooking, we helped
ourselves to the buffet of cold options.
I took a few slices of cheese to put on top of my eggs, and a
single-serve container of nutella for my toast.
The food came out very quickly and everything was good. It was a simple breakfast, but it was very
filling and it was hard to complain when it was free and made to order!
After
breakfast, we walked across the street to Kings Cross to take the Tube to the
Tower Hill station.
Our
instructions said to meet near the Tower Hill Tram coffee stand right outside
of the station at 9:30am. I wasn’t
sure how easy it would be to find this stand, but it was literally right there
in front of us when we exited the station!
A few minutes after we got there, our guide showed up carrying a bright
red umbrella with white dots on it, designed to look like a strawberry! Our
guide’s name was Carlton and he was energetic,
theatrical, and entertaining all day long so we really lucked out with him as
our guide. There were only 14 of us
taking the tour today, which was the perfect size for our group because it was
big enough to have people asking questions and we could chat with them as we
walked between the sites, but not so big that it was hard to keep track of
everyone all day long. Crazy enough,
there was a family who lives in a town near us in California!
We
started the tour next to a section of the original stone wall that the Romans
built around 200 AD to surround and protect London. Pieces of this wall can be seen in various
spots around the City of London, including right outside the
exit to the Tower Hill Underground station!
As we
turned around to leave this area, we got a sneak peak at our next destination: The Tower of London!
Carlton led us around the back of the Underground
station and to a spot overlooking the Tower of London. Since we did not have time to go inside of
this very popular historical site, this was as close as we got to it with a
view of the outer wall.
It was
so neat to see this historic landmark right across the river from the
ultra-modern round building, London’s City Hall. Notice all of those people lined up on the
right side of the photo? It was now a
little after 10am so it looked like it was shaping up to be a busy
day here!
Carlton told us to take a seat on the steps while he gave us a thorough history lesson. Given how long today’s tour was, it was great that he always looked out for places where we could sit down, although not always in the shade.
Out
next stop was at a hidden gem that most people don’t know exists… Saint Dunstan
in the East Church. Behind this church is a garden that is walled
off, keeping the noise of the city out and leaving a lush, green garden with
benches to sit and relax.
The
church itself is a beautiful old Gothic church, with white stone walls towering
over the garden.
Carlton intended for us to stay here in
the shade while he told us another bit of London’s history, but unfortunately
the gardeners were making a lot of noise so we had to leave haha
As we
continued west through the City of London, Carlton pointed out the Walkie Talkie
building…
…and
this neat view of the Shard peaking out at the end of the street (although it
is actually located far away on the south bank)
Carlton led us around the corner to
take a closer look at the outside of the Walkie Talkie building. He told us an interesting story… When this
building first opened, a man parked his Jaguar on a nearby side street. When he returned 2 hours later, he found that
parts of his car had melted causing major damage to his car. It turns out that the sun had reflected off
the concave window panels of the Walkie Talkie building in just the right ankle
that it was directed straight down to the Jaguar and caused the car to
melt! The building had to be fitted with
special shades on the outside of all the windows to change the angle that the
sun reflected so this problem would not happen again. Talk about an engineering fail!! Standing in the plaza outside of the
building, we could look up to see those sunshades clearly.
We
walked through a few side streets to get to the Leadenhall Market. Since it was still so early in the day, there
weren’t many people around and we were able to take some photos of the
beautiful building.
As we
exited the Leadenhall Market, we had a direct view of the Cheese Grater
building. It’s so interesting to see
these super modern highrise buildings contrasting with the old architecture of
the market.
Carlton pointed out the St. Michael
Cornhill Church which means it probably had some kind of historical
significance, but I honestly can’t remember what he said haha
I kept
seeing these posts around the City and I noticed that they had different dates
at the bottom. I asked Carlton what it meant and he said he
wasn’t positive but he thought it was the date that post was repaired after it
got knocked over or damaged.
The
Bank of England, with a red double-decker bus driving by. I really meant to ride on one of the buses
(just to say I did it lol), but we never got a chance.
I just
thought this was a pretty spot with the lamp post and the old building behind
it…
Carlton explained the history of this
pub, but as we walked around the corner, there was a plaque explaining the same
story so I’ll just post a photo of it instead of re-explaining it hehe
Next,
we stopped outside of St. Paul’s Cathedral where Carlton pointed out the irony
that it is free to visit museums in London, but the famous churches (here and
Westminster Abbey, for example) charge a surprisingly high admission fee! Unfortunately, the sun was in a bad spot so
it was hard to get a good photo while he was talking. At least I got some cool photos when we
passed here yesterday!
We walked
past this store selling tons of Union Jack souvenirs. Of course I didn’t have time to go inside
during our tour, so this photo will have to serve as my keepsake instead. In a way, it’s annoying that the building
from across the street reflected in the window, but in a way, I kind of like
the effect!
Our
next stop was St. Bride’s Church. Carlton explained that many brides in London take photos here before the
wedding because the church spire looks like a wedding cake! Our view of it was from an alley looking
through the trees, but you get the idea…
While we were standing in the alley out of the way from the foot traffic on the sidewalk, Carlton took the opportunity to take our orders for lunch. He called the restaurant where we were going and told them what we all wanted to eat from a set list of 5 items: fish and chips, burger and chips, sausage and mash, pesto penne pasta, or cottage pie (like shepherd’s pie but with no crust). DH ordered the cottage pie and I ordered the fish and chips. We still had about 30 minutes of walking before we would arrive at the lunch restaurant so now our food would be ready when we arrived.
We
didn’t really make any more official stops before getting to lunch, but we did
walk past the Royal Courts of Justice building so I snapped a quick photo of
it.
I
thought it was funny that they painted “Look Right —>” on the pavement to
help people safely cross the street. It
seriously took me until our last day in London to get the hang of looking
right first… you’d be surprised how hard it is to break a habit you’ve been
practicing for nearly your entire life!
Carlton led us on the scenic route to
get to the lunch restaurant. Instead of
walking on the Strand, which was a very busy street with lots of people crowding the
sidewalks, we cut down to the river and walked along the north bank on a
pedestrian path. We didn’t know exactly
where we were going for lunch nor how long it would take to walk there, so it
was kind of surprising when it ended up being a 30 minute walk. It would have been nice if Carlton either warned us that the walk
would be 30 minutes straight, or if he found somewhere to stop at the midway
point. Since he didn’t do that, it felt
like we were walking f-o-r-e-v-e-r!! That wouldn’t have been a problem normally
(you’ve seen the amount of walking we did every day on this trip, so 30 minutes
is no big deal in the grand scheme of things), but nearly everyone in our group
desperately needed to use a restroom by this point in the day and we all would
have appreciated a potty break before doing all that walking! We got to the restaurant at 12:30pm, so 3 hours after the tour
started, and closer to 4 hours after we left our hotel this morning, so yea…
you get the idea!
Lunch was
at a pub called Walkers of Whitehall.
The
restaurant was not very crowded, but the hostess was expecting us since we
pre-ordered our food, and she led us downstairs to a private room with a booth
large enough to fit our entire group at one table. We had a family of 4 vegetarians on the tour
with us, and they did not want to eat pasta for lunch (they said they eat A LOT
of pasta as the default veggie dish haha), so Carlton told them where they
could find some other options for good Indian food and they were going to meet
us back at Walkers in an hour. Another
lady who was on the tour by herself decided she was going to leave right when
we got to the pub. It was actually kind
of awkward because she told one of the other ladies while we were all in the
restroom, and then she just left, so it became that lady’s obligation to tell Carlton. We all thought it was very rude that she
didn’t tell him she was leaving herself, likely to avoid having to give him a
tip.
Anyway,
that left us with 10 people at lunch including Carlton. We sat down at our booth and they gave us
this menu. We had already ordered our
food, so the waitress took our drink orders.
Strawberry Tours organized a deal for us where
we get our choice of food and a half pint of beer/cider/soda/juice for £10.
The
food came out about 5 minutes later. DH
really enjoyed his cottage pie… it had a base of chopped beef with mashed
potatoes on top, then a ton of gravy poured all over it, and of course a side
of peas. Those Brits are all about their
peas!
My fish
and chips was also very good, especially when I added some malt vinegar on top!
Carlton did not rush us at all to
finish lunch, and even after we all finished eating, we enjoyed our time
relaxing on the comfy booth and soaking up the air conditioning. It was also a great opportunity to chat with
the other people on our tour. This was
when DH learned that two of the other parties on our tour were specifically
visiting London to attend the MLB London Series baseball game with the
Yankees vs. Red Sox playing on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. He had noticed lots of people wearing Yankees
and Red Sox shirts as we were walking around London yesterday and today, but he
just assumed that it was other tourists visiting from the east coast (you can
get to London in nearly the same time as you can get to California when coming from New York and Boston!) Immediately, DH said he wanted to go to the
game, but the others said the game sold out within minutes of tickets being
released a few months ago. DH was super bummed!
After
lunch, we took a quick walk around the corner to see Trafalgar Square. I thought it was a little weird that Carlton didn’t spend much time
explaining the significance of this square considering it is so well known, but
I think he wanted to avoid the area due to all the noise from the cars and
other pedestrians. He actually took out
a portable microphone headset when we got here, and after using it for
literally one minute, the batteries died!
He really was a great tour guide and we had a wonderful day with him,
but I thought this was very unprofessional.
He knew he was leading this tour today and he knew that he liked using
his headset when we walk through the more crowded parts of Westminster, so he should have known to
charge his device last night. Sorry…
rant over!
Here is
the glimpse we got of Nelson’s Column and Trafalgar Square as we walked around the corner
towards The Mall.
How
cute is this crosswalk sign!? Carlton said this neighborhood is very
LGBTQ friendly, and this was one tribute to that. There was another sign that had the male and
female symbols light up in green instead of the little walking man, but I
couldn’t get a good photo of it.
We
walked down along the Mall, which is the road that connects Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace. Our next stop was to see this monument to the
Duke of York. There is a little chant
that British children learn in school and Carlton was nice enough to sing it to
us. It’s actually a catchy little song…
The
funny thing about this song is that it was very popular with tour guides
throughout our time in London. We actually heard the story of the Duke of
York and listened to the song on 3 of our tours! They say repetition is the key to learning
new information, so maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to hear this story and the
song 3 times because I actually remember it now that the trip is over! Haha!
This
monument was built in 1834 to honor the Duke of York.
This
was the view I had all day, following Carlton and his red umbrella through
the streets of London! I told him how much I appreciated him
carrying that umbrella all day long as it made it very easy to keep track of
him when we got to more crowded areas.
There are moments in nearly every walking tour when I lose sight of my
guide, so this eliminated that problem and we could always see the umbrella
even on a busy sidewalk.
Notice
how the road on The Mall is red… this is to create the effect of a very long
red carpet leading up to Buckingham Palace.
The
Prince Philip House is one of the more modern buildings on The Mall.
Next to
that was a pair of statues of Queen Elizabeth and King George VI. While we were standing in the shade, Carlton took a moment to explain how
they play into the history of the British royalty and that they are the parents
of the current queen, Queen Elizabeth II.
He also explained how Kings and Queens get their names, which I
thought was really interesting because I never realized how it all works.
We took
a detour onto a side street to see St. James’s Palace. Look at all those fancy London taxicabs coming down the road!
St. James’s
Palace was built in the 1530’s by King Henry VIII. Carlton took this opportunity to
explain what made King Henry VIII famous… all of his wives! He explained the story behind each wife, and
we learned the phrase people use to keep them straight: divorced, beheaded,
died, divorced, beheaded, survived. I
really learned a lot of British history on this tour, and Carlton had a great way of telling the
story so that I would retain the information.
Heading
out to The Mall, we walked all the way down to see Buckingham Palace. We didn’t actually walk up to the gates
because that would have involved crossing several lanes of traffic, but we had
a good view of the palace and the gardens from where we stood. Carlton was nice enough to give us a
few minutes to take photos here.
Next,
we crossed The Mall to enter St. James’s Park.
This is one of the 8 Royal Parks across London, and covers 58 acres including
a lake with ducks, geese, and pelicans!
This park was so lush and green, and is a beautiful escape from the
bustling city that surrounds it.
The
London Eye peaked out above the trees in the distance…
If you
look closely, you can see the pelicans hanging out on the rocks in the lake…
We
exited St. James’s Park and walked past the House of Lords Appointments
Commission.
Our
next stop was to see Westminster Abbey.
This church has hosted 16 royal weddings, including when Prince William
married Kate Middleton in 2011, and is the burial site of over 3,000 prominent
British citizens.
The
last stop on our epic full day walking tour was Parliament Square Garden. I imagine this must be a great place to take
photos of Big Ben, but we were out of luck with all that scaffolding in the
way.
Overall, this tour was a fantastic way to get a huge overview of London. We covered a ton of ground and Carlton was chock full of anecdotes and information about all of the sights we saw. As wonderful as our tour was, I just looked back on their website and noticed that we did not visit all of the places they said we would see. The places we missed were the Churchill War Rooms, Leicester Square, 10 Downing Street, and Tower Bridge. We did get to see a bunch of places not mentioned on the website, but I’m not sure why we had to skip these other very notable locations. We thanked Calrton for his time and tipped him generously before walking over to the Westminster Underground Station. We wanted to go back to the hotel to get changed for tonight and grab some jackets because it was already cooling off and we didn’t want a repeat of yesterday!
After
we finished at the hotel, we took a quick detour to check out the lobby of the St.
Pancras Renaissance Hotel. We saw the
grand facade every time we went to the train station, so we wanted to take a
peak inside the hotel. This hotel was
originally built in the 1870’s by the railway company who was also building St.
Pancras Station. It was used as a hotel
until 1935 when it was converted to offices for the railway, but then it was
shut down in the 1980s after failing fire safety regulations. In 2004, plans began to redevelop the
historic building as a hotel, and the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel opened in
2011 as the building we can see today.
Fun
fact: In 1996, the Spice Girls filmed
their Wannabe music video in this building while it was still abandoned.
I was
on a mission to find the grand staircase featured in that music video, but wow
does it ever look more majestic today after the restoration project!
Not the
best photo because the light was shining in through the windows, but at least
we can prove we were there hehe
We left
the hotel through the front entrance and walked down the street to enter the
St. Pancras train station.
This
bronze sculpture called “The Meeting Place” is featured inside the train
station.
We
hopped on the Tube to get to Covent Garden. Our plan
for tonight was to explore around this area and Leicester Square. We asked Carlton for a recommendation of a good
bar in this area and he suggested the Punch and Judy Pub because it over looks
the courtyard outside Covent Garden where there are usually good street
performers.
We went
inside and up the stairs to the bar area, but it was soooo crowded! We could barely enter the room, let alone get
to the bar or find a spot to stand on the balcony! That was an unfortunate fail, so we went back
downstairs to walk around Covent Garden. At 6pm on a Friday evening, it’s no
surprise that this place was packed with tourists and locals alike.
We hadn’t eaten since lunch at the pub at 12:30pm, so I was getting hangry and didn’t have the patience for a place this hectic. I ate half a Clif Bar to hold me over because we didn’t want to get dinner quite yet (I always keep one in my purse for hunger emergencies like this!), and we continued walking around and exploring the neighborhood.
We came
across this colorful archway with rainbow lights, which I think was installed
for Pride month.
We were
close by one of the pubs I had bookmarked on my Google Map for places I wanted
to see, so we took a detour to get a drink at The Cross Keys. I just loved the décor outside of this pub!
There
must have been over a hundred people hanging out in front of this pub, so we
went inside to get a drink. Funny
enough, there was no one inside! I guess
the locals like to take advantage of the perfect summer weather when it’s not
cold and rainy like the rest of the year!
I was
happy to see that they had cider on tap, and DH really liked their beer
selection.
After
we finished our drinks, we walked around the corner and found this Pride Pop-Up
Shop. It turned out that this was the
headquarters to coordinate the Pride parade which was scheduled for the
following weekend. We spent a few
minutes chatting with the team of coordinators, but unfortunately, we were
leaving London on Tuesday so we wouldn’t be there for the parade.
We
walked around another corner and found Neals Yard, an amazingly colorful
pedestrian alley that opened up into a small courtyard. It was hard to take a good photo to capture
everything because the space was so cramped, but this shows one of the corners.
By now, it was 7:30pm and we were ready to find somewhere to eat dinner. We walked along one of the main streets that had lots of pubs and restaurants, looking for somewhere that looked lively and fun but that didn’t have a wait to get a table.
We
decided to go to a pub called The Long Acre.
The décor was more modern than most of the other pubs we had been to,
and it had a sports bar vibe. They had a
few big screen TVs and were airing the USA vs. France Women’s World Cup
game, so it was pretty busy. We couldn’t
find any open tables on the main level, but there was a balcony upstairs that
had an open table. Unfortunately, we
couldn’t really see the game from up there, but that was okay with us as long
as we could sit and eat dinner.
Notice
how everyone is looking towards us? The
TV mounted on the front of the balcony wall was showing the Women’s World Cup
game. The TV at the far side of the bar
that we could see from our table was airing a random men’s soccer match that no
one seemed to care about.
By now,
I had ordered fish and chips at two restaurants but I had yet to try a steak
and ale pie so that’s what I ordered. I
think DH ordered that too.
The
food came out pretty quickly, and everything tasted good, but the portion was
kind of small. Luckily, we had a pint of
cider and beer to help fill us up!
After
dinner, we walked around Leicester Square and the surrounding area. I couldn’t resist taking a photo of this Abbey Road display in the M&M World
store!
We
wandered over to Piccadilly Circus just as the buildings were lighting up at night.
Lots of
people were hanging out around the statue of Eros.
It was
getting late and we had had a long day, but we stepped into one last pub for a
drink as we watched Team USA beat France to advance to the semi-final round
of the Women’s World Cup. We were kind
of happy to be in England and not France tonight! haha
After
the game ended, we got on the Tube to head back to our hotel after a wonderful
day exploring London.
When my
alarm went off at 7:30am, all I wanted to do was go back to sleep, but
then I realized… We’re going to London today! We quickly got ready and finished packing the
rest of our bags. I must say, it is much
easier to pack when we don’t need to worry about weighing our bags or putting
our liquids into 3-1-1 bags! We piled our suitcases in the elevator with
all 3 on top of each other so DH and I could both squeeze in there
together. When we got down to the ground
floor, there was someone waiting to get in the elevator. I can only imagine what he thought when the
doors opened and we literally fell out into the hallway haha
We got
to Marks and Spencers right when they opened at 8:30am and I left DH out in the
passage while I ran in to pick up a few croissants for breakfast that we could
eat while we were waiting to board our train.
Time
for another transportation fiasco story… We wanted to take Uber to get to Gare
du Nord, but that is kind of hard to do without an international data
plan. I thought the wifi from our hotel
would reach out to the street, but since the hotel was way back inside the
passage, the wifi signal only reached to about halfway down the hall. I ran back to the hotel lobby, logged into
the free wifi, and requested an Uber, dropping my location pin out on Grands
Boulevards. Once the app said our driver
was on his way, I didn’t really need the wifi signal anymore. It said he would arrive in 12 minutes, so I
went back out to DH to help him roll the bags to the sidewalk and so we could
wait for our driver to arrive. It was
now 8:35am, so needing to wait 12 minutes for the Uber cut things a
little close with getting to our train on time, but we hoped for the best. Our Eurostar tickets said we needed to arrive
around 9am for the 10am train, and Gare du Nord is only
about a mile from our hotel.
Fifteen
minutes later, our driver still hadn’t arrived, but since the wifi didn’t reach
out to the sidewalk, I had no idea where he was or if he cancelled on us or
what could have happened. I didn’t want
to go back to the hotel because if the Uber driver came right after I left,
there was no way for DH to tell me he was there. I decided to just make a run for it, so I
left DH to watch all the luggage while I literally ran through the passage back
to the hotel. Luckily there weren’t many
people there at this early hour so I didn’t knock anyone over in the
process! I logged back into the wifi and
checked the Uber app and it said the driver was one minute away. Oh no!
Now I had to run all the way back out to the sidewalk, and then I saw DH
down the street, loading our bags into the trunk of a car. That was way more complicated than it needed
to be, but thank goodness we were finally sitting in the back of the Uber and
heading to Gare du Nord. Normal hotels
located out on the street wouldn’t have that issue because the wifi probably
reaches out to the sidewalk, or if not, then it isn’t a big deal to stand just
inside the lobby with the wifi signal and look out the windows for when the
Uber arrives. In all that time waiting
for the Uber, we never even saw a taxi drive by so I’m not sure how else we
could have gotten to the train. Maybe
the person at the front desk of the hotel could call us a taxi? They knew we were checking out and going to
the train station, but didn’t offer to get us a taxi so I’m not sure if that
something they even do.
Ten
minutes later, we pulled up to the front of Gare du Nord. This is a huge transit hub, so I wasn’t
exactly sure where to go. I saw a sign
for Eurostar when we first walked into the station, and it said to go up the
stairs opposite platform 17. Hmm, ok,
where is platform 17? We walked a little
further into the station and saw the platform numbers, so we walked down to
platform 17 on the far side of the building, and then we saw the stairs and
escalator right near it, leading upstairs to a balcony level. At the top of the escalator, there wasn’t any
signage so we didn’t know where to go next.
We just kept walking and eventually saw a ticket window, so we handed
the agent our papers that I had printed out at home with our ticket
information.
Remember
how I specifically picked seats facing the front of the train? I did not want to sit facing backwards for
two and a half hours, and booking our tickets within days of them being
released gave me that preference. When
we checked in for our train, they informed us that they had changed the train
for our journey this morning, and we were automatically reassigned seats. They were happy to tell us that we were still
sitting together (not everyone was so lucky!), but now we were sitting at one
of those groups of 4 seats with 2 seats facing backwards, then a slim table top
surface, then 2 other people sitting forwards facing us. Not only did we have to sit facing backwards,
but now we had the knees of strangers bumping into us? No way!!
That was a big downgrade in our seats and I was not happy about it. The agent said I could speak with someone at
the gate after going through security and ask to have our seats changed.
The
next part went so quickly that I’m not sure of the exact order we did
everything, but we went through passport control to leave France, another passport control to
enter England, and security for
Eurostar. They tell you on your tickets
to arrive 60 minutes early to leave time for all of those things, and I could
see it taking a long time if there was a line, but somehow we got super lucky
because there were only about 5 people ahead of us when we arrived. By the time we were ready for each stage of
the process, the people ahead of us had already finished, so we entered the
Eurostar terminal by 9:15am.
Our
next stop was to find the gate agent to ask about changing our newly assigned
seats. We explained what happened to him
and asked if he could change us to different seats that were facing forwards
with no table and other people facing towards us. He searched the computer for a few minutes,
and then he quietly said “I am going to upgrade you because I couldn’t find any
other seats.” Sounds good to us! We didn’t know what exactly was entailed in
the “upgrade” because he wasn’t specific and I never researched other seating
options besides the basic cheap seats we originally booked. Either way, at least we could sit facing
forwards for the 2.5 hour journey.
We
still had about half an hour until boarding so we found a place to sit and pass
the time. There is surprisingly limited
seating in the waiting area here.
Instead of rows of chairs, they had a bunch of ottoman-like
benches. They were each large and square
so people could sit around them on all sides with no backrests, and you had to
share with other parties because there weren’t that many of them. It just seemed kind of weird, like they
didn’t expect a lot of people to be sitting and waiting for a train there. We arrived on the early side and got one of
the last spots, so many people had to stand.
Rows of folding chairs would have made more sense, if you ask me!
About
15 minutes prior to departure, the gates opened and we were able to board the
train. There was a huge bottleneck as
everyone tried to pass through the same set of doors, and then slowly go down
the escalator (actually, it was a moving ramp, not an escalator, so you had to
put your foot in front of your rolling suitcases or they would roll down the
ramp and get away from you!). Our
tickets said a coach number so we walked forward to find our train car. There was an agent standing at the door of
each train car to check everyone in individually, so it took a while until it
was our turn. There were a bunch of
people on line for our coach but they had tickets for a different coach, so it
was just very chaotic because no one seemed to know where they were supposed to
go.
When it
was our turn to check in, the man found our names on his tablet and told us to climb
on board and put our luggage in the rack.
There was space above our seats to put our smaller rolling carry on bags
so we just put the larger bag in the shared luggage rack. When we got to our
seats, I could tell that we were in a nicer coach than we had originally
booked. Our original coach had 2 seats
on either side of the aisle, but this coach had 1 seat on one side of the aisle
and 2 seats on the other side, so the seats were bigger than normal train
seats. We were seated on the side with 2
seats together. Across the aisle from us
was an older couple who were seated in front and in back of each other. We saw them ask if they could be reseated
together and the agent said that was not possible.
The
train left on time, and after a short journey through the Paris suburbs, we entered the
countryside. This was our view for most
of the journey:
About
30 minutes into the ride, the agent who checked us in came down the aisle
rolling a food and beverage cart. He
handed each person a tray of food and asked if they wanted coffee or tea. When he got to our row, someone from the row
before us asked for milk for the coffee so he paused to help that man, then
continued serving trays to the row after us.
Hmmm, that was weird. Did he skip
our row because he got distracted and didn’t realize what row he was up
to? Or did he skip our row because he
somehow knew that the gate agent upgraded our seats, but since we technically
didn’t pay for seats with meal service, we wouldn’t get the tray of food? Honestly, it didn’t really matter either way
because we already ate our croissants from Marks and Spencer so neither of us
was hungry, but we still wanted to know what happened. After he finished serving all the trays, the
agent walked through the coach again to see if anyone wanted a refill of
coffee. When he got to our row, he
looked at us with a confused expression, then said “Oh! Did I forget to serve
your tray?” LOL DH and I looked at each
other and tried not to laugh! I guess we
were questioning it for nothing and everyone in this coach gets meal
service. A moment later, the agent came
back with our trays for breakfast. The
croissant was good, but the roll was so hard that I couldn’t bite into it, and
the yogurt was plain (yuck!) so we didn’t eat much of it after all.
A
little after 11am, the train made a brief stop to let some
passengers off, then we continued the rest of the way into London. We arrived in St. Pancras station at 11:45am. Since we already went through passport
control in Paris, we were able to exit the train
with our luggage and just walk straight out of the station. I knew our hotel was close to St. Pancras
station, but I didn’t realize exactly how close until we were there. As long as we exited the station through the
correct exit (there are A LOT of exits from St. Pancras and Kings Cross
station!), we just had to walk across Euston Road and our hotel was right there
on the closest side street. It was a
very convenient location when coming and going each day!
We got to
Central Hotel around 12 noon, and at first, the lady at the
front desk said we had to come back later to check in to our room. We had a lot of things planned today so we
really just wanted to get into our room now and not have to worry about
checking in later. She went upstairs to
check with the maid and it turned out she had just finished cleaning one of the
rooms so we were able to check in to that room.
I thought there was an elevator when I booked this hotel, but we never
found it. Our room was on the first
floor, which was really the second floor because the lobby is its own
floor. The hotel has a narrow staircase
with a lot of turns, so it was a little tricky to carry the luggage upstairs,
but at least we only had to do it one time and it was just one flight. When we got to our room and opened the door,
we were in for quite a surprise. Our
room was sooooo small! There wasn’t even enough floor space to open the
suitcase on the floor! I am fairly
certain this room was smaller than an inside cabin on a cruise ship! The bathroom was so small that it had a
sliding barn door, and when you sit on the toilet, the sink hangs over your lap
and your toes hit into the frame of the shower stall! There was a closet along the wall, but it was
all hanging space and no shelves, so it wasn’t very useful for the kind of
packing we did. There were 2 nightstands
with 3 drawers in each, so at least we could use that to store some of our
clothes. We made it work, but it was
definitely a tight squeeze.
I took
this photo later in the week, so apologies for the messy room. I was standing in the doorway, the closet and
desk space is on the left, and the bathroom is on the right, and that’s it! It was seriously the smallest hotel room I
have ever seen!
After
we got settled in the room, we went back across the street to St. Pancras
Station to get some pounds from the ATM.
We also needed to get our transit cards so we found the vending
machines. We decided to get the Oyster
Cards for each of us because I didn’t like the idea of using my contactless
credit in case it got lost in the hustle and bustle of the Tube station or
whatever. The machine was very easy to
use and we were able to load the 7-day Travelcard right onto the Oyster Card
before it was dispensed from the machine.
We were able to pay for the cards using a Costco Visa chip and signature
card, so everything worked seamlessly!
Thanks
to our double breakfast on the Eurostar, we weren’t hungry for lunch yet, so we
hopped on the Tube to get to the Westminster stop. Already, we felt more at ease using the metro
system in London. Everything was in English so obviously that
made things easier, but it was more than that.
Instead of having to go up and down a bunch of flights of stairs, London had escalators in their metro
stations! Funny enough, we still
averaged over 20 flights of stairs per day in London, just like in Paris, but it was just nice knowing
we could ride the escalator and conserve some energy in the stations.
Exiting
the Westminster station, I had my first “OMG, I’m in London” moment… Big Ben was right in
front of us!
Unfortunately,
the tower is in the middle of a 4-year-long restoration process so it was
completely hidden under scaffolding. It
wasn’t quite the iconic building we had hoped to see, but I guess we can just
add it to the list of major monuments hidden under scaffolding that we saw on
this vacation. At least they left the
clock exposed! Unfortunately, the sun
was in the wrong place for a decent photo so this was the best I could get…
Back
when I was still researching our plans for this trip, I knew I wanted to take a
sightseeing cruise along the Thames River. There are several companies that offer
similar tours between Westminster Bridge and Tower Bridge, and then a few other
companies that continue further along the river to Greenwich and other
towns. The company I liked most was
called City Cruises. They offer
scheduled tours throughout the day, going in both directions from Westminster
Pier to Tower Pier. They do have boats
that go all the way to Greenwich but I didn’t plan to go out
there considering our limited time in London. You can buy tickets online but you need to
pick a specific boat time. I knew I
wanted us to ride the boat today, but since we were just arriving from Paris and I didn’t know how the
timing would work out, I didn’t want to pre-purchase tickets and lock us in to
a time slot. There wasn’t a price
benefit to booking in advance, but it would have been nice to avoid waiting on
a ticket line.
About a
month before the trip, I was looking around on Groupon and found a deal for a
3-day unlimited ride pass with City Cruises which cost £1 more than the cost of
one single ride. Even though we had a
busy schedule planned in London and I wasn’t sure if we would
have time to take a second river cruise, it just made sense to buy the Groupon
in case we were looking for something to do one day and had a chance to take a
second cruise. For only £1, we thought
it was worth the risk that we may only take one ride.
The
Groupon confirmation wasn’t an actual ticket, so we needed to go to the ticket
window when we got to the pier to exchange the voucher for our 3-day pass. The lady gave me a receipt that we were
supposed to use as our “ticket” so I kept it somewhere safe to make sure we
wouldn’t lose it. It was now a little
after 1pm and the next boat was leaving at 1:20pm. There were A LOT of people on line ahead of
us, but we really wanted to get on this boat because the next one wasn’t
leaving until 2pm.
When we
finally reached the front of the line, a crew member helped us climb aboard, and
we were glad we made it before the boat filled up. The problem was that almost every seat upstairs
was already taken. We went back down to
the lower level, but there wasn’t any air conditioning and it was extremely hot
in there, plus it’s not very fun to sit inside because you don’t have a good
view during the tour. We went back
upstairs again and had to look very closely at the rows to find rows where
people were spread out and taking up more than one seat per person. We did a similar cruise in Chicago and the staff walked around and
forced people to squeeze in so everyone could have a seat. It would have been nice if the staff on this
boat did that instead of forcing us to ask people to move over. We actually had a few people refuse to move
in, which I thought was really rude because it’s not like they paid for 2 seats
on the boat! Eventually, we found one
seat for each of us, but not in the same row, so we had to sit separately for
the tour. It was kind of a bummer, but the tour only takes 40 minutes so we
made it work.
After
the boat left Westminster Pier, it went to the south side of the river to pick
up more people at the London Eye Pier. I
honestly have no idea where those people found seats because the boat was
already really full, but we stayed docked there for about 10 minutes so there
must have been some people joining us.
While we had some time to kill, I got to take some fun photos of the
London Eye!
Looking
down the river towards Big Ben and Parliament as the boat turned around
As the
boat pulled away from the London Eye Pier, the guide came on the microphone to
introduce himself. It was cool to have a
live guide as we cruised along the river, but you could tell that his speech
was scripted. It was funny, but you could
just tell that he did not write the jokes and he says the same thing on every
tour. The guide pointed out each
landmark and gave a little anecdote or bit of information about each place.
Hungerford Bridge and Golden Jubilee Bridges
Cleopatra’s
Needle
OXO Building, the “Pregnant” Building, and
the Shard off in the distance
It’s
funny how many of the buildings in London are named for their shape. This one is said to look like a pregnant
woman…
Shakespeare’s
Globe Theater
A good
view of the Cheese Grater, the Scalpel, and the Walkie Talkie Buildings
The
Shard
The Walkie Talkie Building, with a good view of the top
level where the Sky Garden is located
The Tower of London
Tower Bridge… you can also see our guide at
the front of the building, and how crowded it was on the upper level
The boat docked right on time at 2pm, and by now we were getting hungry. There was a Paul restaurant right near where we exited the pier, so we stopped in there to pick up a couple of sandwiches, and took them to go to eat on a nearby bench in the shade.
Our
next destination was the Sky Garden, a free observation deck at the
top of the Walkie Talkie building. Each
Monday at 8:30am London time, they release tickets on
their website for 3 weeks in advance for time slots in 15-minute
increments. There are a different number
of tickets available for each of those time slots, but it was usually around
150 tickets each. When I was planning
this trip, I knew we’d want to go to the Sky Garden today because it is so close to
where we ended the river cruise, but since I did not know exactly which river
cruise boat we would take, I didn’t know exactly what time we could go to the Sky Garden. To hedge our bets, I booked the Sky Garden tickets for 2 time slots-
2:30pm for if we made the 1:20pm cruise, and 3:15pm for if we took the 2pm cruise. Either way, we had about 30 minutes to get
from Tower Pier to the Walkie Talkie building, a 0.4 mile walk away. Since we took the 1:20pm cruise, we arrived at the
Walkie Talkie building at 2:25pm to use our first set of
tickets.
There
was a long line of people waiting outside the entrance, but they were all
walk-ups who didn’t have timed entry tickets so we could walk past them. When we went in the front door, we showed our
tickets to the lady at the front desk and she told us to proceed through
security. Crazy enough, this was by far
the strictest security we encountered so far on the trip. In Paris, we had to go through a metal
detector and our bags went through an X-ray machine at every museum. At the Sky Garden, they do that as well, but they
made us empty everything out of our pockets (even pieces of paper like the
paper ticket we were holding to access the Sky Garden!) and we even had to take off
our watches. I thought they were going
to make us take off our wedding bands, but luckily they didn’t go that
far.
Once
that was done, we got in an elevator which went directly up to the 35th
floor for the Sky Garden.
We exited the elevator into a big open space with lots of tables and seating areas and a big bar in the middle. We walked past that to go straight outside onto the balcony with a beautiful view over the Thames and Southwark.
The
safety glass was good for blocking the wind, but not ideal for taking photos!
Looking
straight up to the overhang above the balcony
I
couldn’t get a good photo without the glare from the windows, so this was the
best I could do…
It was
such a clear day that it felt like we could see across all of England! We were really lucky with the weather because
this is London and I know they have a lot of rainy days!
Back
inside the building, we walked up the stairs to see the views from a different
angle.
You can
see the big open seating area and the outdoor balcony behind us in this photo
There
were live plants and trees growing in the Sky Garden, so it really was a garden in
the sky!
A great
view of the Gherkin, the Cheese Grater, and the Scalpel Buildings
Looking
down into the Tower of London, and the Tower Bridge
We
spent about 30 minutes walking around and checking out the views. We had tickets to come back at night in a few
days, so we planned to visit the bar at that time. DH’s company has a small office near the Sky Garden, so he pre-arranged to visit
the office later this afternoon. We had
some time to spare so we went for a walk around the City of London.
I
thought this building looked really cool, especially with the sun reflecting
off the balconies…
As we
were walking, we cut through a pedestrian walkway between two buildings. It was still June which is Pride month, so we
saw a lot of celebration throughout London, including this rainbow-painted
walkway! How cool!
When we
passed this red phone box on a side street, I couldn’t resist taking a
photo! It was the first one we saw, but
as the days passed, we saw tons of them all over the city.
We cut
through the shopping center called One New Change. I loved how St. Paul’s Cathedral was framed between
the buildings and reflected in the mirrored windows!
Another
red phone box with St. Paul’s Cathedral peeking out through
the trees
We’re
in London!
We
found our way to DH’s company’s office and spent some time chatting with his
coworkers. The original plan was to go
to the Museum of London after leaving his office, but
we decided to skip the museum and find somewhere to sit down and have a drink
instead. I was looking forward to that
museum and learning some history about London, but we were tired and just
wanted to sit down and relax for a bit.
I had wanted to visit the Anchor Bankside, so even though it was over a
mile away, we decided to head that way. We
walked over the London Bridge (thank goodness it wasn’t
falling down!) and down to the Anchor pub.
This place opened in the early 1600’s and is considered one of the
oldest taverns in London. It is located right on the south bank of the Thames and has a huge outdoor seating
area, making it the perfect place for a drink on this cool summer afternoon.
DH had
a mission to visit as many pubs as possible during his time in London, so this was our first of many
drinks at pubs. I was very excited to
learn that every pub we visited had at least one cider on tap! Given the choice between beer and cider, I
will pick cider every time, so I was thrilled that it was so readily served in London! This cider was definitely my favorite of all
the ciders I had… it was a berries and cherries cider!
Another
thing that I loved about many of the pubs in London was the buildings were so
pretty! They often had fun, bright paint
colors and beautiful colorful flowers featured somewhere on the building, and
they were all begging me to take a photo of their exteriors (so you will see
many pub photos in the coming days! Haha)
By the
time we finished our drinks, it was a little after 5pm and we were starting to get
hungry. We could have stayed at Anchor
for dinner, but decided we wanted to explore someplace different so I checked
my Google Map to see what was nearby. Another
pub I had wanted to visit was about a one mile walk away, but it would be a
scenic walk along the river and across a bridge so we decided to head over
there. I’m not surprised that we had
such high step counts every day of this trip considering how often I looked at
my map, said “Oh, that’s only a mile away” and we walked there! All those one mile walks add up fast!!
On the
way, we walked past Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. I considered trying to get tickets to a show
one night but we just didn’t have enough days for all the things I wanted to
do, so that will have to wait for a future trip to London.
We
crossed the Thames via the Blackfriars Railway Bridge. Right next to it is a bridge used for the
train tracks. That bridge looks really
funky and has a great view looking further to the right towards the other
bridges crossing the river. I didn’t
realize this at the time, but we could have used our unlimited ride metro
passes to enter this station and walk along the platform and see the view/take
photos essentially for free. Oh well,
we’ll add that as one more thing to do next time we visit London!
Just a
block north of the river after crossing the bridge, we reached our dinner
destination: The Black Friar. This pub
was built in 1875 on the site of a former medieval Dominican friary, and much
of the architecture reflects that. As we
approached the pub, we could tell it was extremely popular with the locals as
there were hundreds of people standing outside, enjoying a pint after
work.
Notice
the black statue of a friar overlooking the courtyard. This was another example of the interesting
exterior decorations on the pubs in London.
Funny
enough, when we went inside, there were only a handful of people standing at
the bar ordering drinks, and nearly all of the tables in the restaurant were
empty! I guess everyone was just
standing outside with their drinks and not interested in having dinner? To be fair, it was not even 6pm yet so we were definitely early
for the dinner rush.
The
hostess took us to a table at the back of the pub in this amazing room with
marbled stone walls and tiled mosaics on the arched ceiling with funny little
black stone sculptures on the walls.
We
didn’t take much time to look over the menu because we both knew what we wanted
for dinner… fish and chips!
Since
there were so few people eating at the pub, our food came out very
quickly. I’m not quite sure what I was
expecting because I have had fish and chips many times in the States, and this
was pretty much the same thing. The fish
was a nice, big piece, and it was fried to a crispy perfection (as were the
chips, but most of them are hiding under the fish in the photo), and the
waitress brought us a bottle of malt vinegar so I could eat it the proper
British way!
So, do
you remember how extremely hot it was while we were in Paris? The high temperature was over 90 degrees
every day we were there, and we were hot and sweaty pretty much 24 hours a day
for 6 days straight. We were greatly
looking forward to visiting London as it was forecast to be
cooler. Well imagine our surprise when
it was so cool that we were shivering in our shorts and t-shirts!! We were going on a walking tour tonight along
the Thames River, so if we were this cold at 7:30pm before the sun set, we knew we
wouldn’t last long at the walking tour which started at 9:15pm if we didn’t go back to the
hotel and get changed. We weren’t
planning to go back to the hotel until after the tour at the end of the night,
but we had enough time and an unlimited ride metro pass, so why not? We took the Tube back to the hotel and
changed into jeans, and we brought a light sweater for me and a light jacket
for DH in case we got cold in our short-sleeve shirts.
We took
the Tube back down to the south bank, and this was the beautiful scene as we
exited the station:
I just
loved how the sunset reflected on the windows, and the colorful flags hanging
overhead made for a great photo!
We also
stopped to look at this statue of Nelson Mandela
As I’ve
mentioned, tonight’s evening activity was a 2.5 hour free walking tour along
the south bank of the Thames River to see the nighttime skyline
and learn a bit of history about the city.
The tour was offered through Free Tours by Foot, the same company we had
great experiences with in New Orleans, Chicago, San Francisco, and New York. It wasn’t exactly ideal to take this tour
tonight considering we had a one hour time zone change coming from Paris, so
our bodies felt like it was an hour later, plus we had already had a very long
day of travel and touring. It sounded
like a fun tour, and they only offered it two days a week, with the other
option being Monday night when we already had a 12-hour bus tour booked and
knew we would be too tired to do this tour afterwards. We figured that since it was a free tour, we
would show up at the starting point and stay with the tour as long as we could,
and if we got too tired, we would leave early.
The
tour met in Jubilee Gardens, a small park near the London
Eye. By the way, we decided not to ride
in the London Eye. We have been in the High
Roller Ferris Wheel in Las Vegas, which is basically the same
thing so we’ve already had that experience.
We could see the views from the Sky Garden for free, so the London Eye
didn’t seem like a good way to spend our time or money. Yes, you get a better view of Parliament and
Big Ben from the London Eye, but those buildings were all covered in
scaffolding so there wasn’t much to see.
Maybe if we go back to London in the future and if all the
buildings are exposed and if the weather is perfectly clear, we might consider
riding the London Eye. We’ll see!
Anyway,
this was about as close as we got to the London Eye on this trip.
Our
tour guide’s name was Matt and he moved to London from Poland a few years ago. Matt was a great guide, offering lots of
funny anecdotes and interesting information about the sites along the Thames. I really enjoyed taking this tour in the
evening and getting to see some of the activity along the river at night, and
of course the buildings all looked so beautiful in the twilight glow. There were about 30 people on the tour with
us, so it was probably the biggest group I’ve had for walking tour.
Our
first stop was to see Parliament and Big Ben from across the river. In the foreground, you can see the pier where
our tour boat docked earlier this afternoon to let more people onto our
already-crowded sightseeing boat.
Turning
in the other direction, we could see Hungerford Bridge and Golden Jubilee Bridges, with Charing Cross Station
glowing in red in the distance.
This
was not a part of the tour, but we walked past this huge skate park under a
terrace for the building above. I looked
it up and this skate park was built in the 1970’s.
We
continued walking along the river, stopping every few minutes so Matt could
tell us a story about London’s history. I wished those barges weren’t in the river
because they were blocking a beautiful scene of St. Paul’s Cathedral and the City of London!
The red
bridge in the foreground is Blackfriars Railway Bridge, where we walked over the river
before to get to dinner. The building
with the long slant on its right side is The Cheese Grater, the one with the
sharp slant towards the top right side is The Scalpel, and the funky building
on the far right is The Walkie Talkie (with the Sky Garden up on its roof).
As the
sun set and the sky got darker, the buildings looked even more beautiful!
Standing
in the same spot, I turned to the left to take this photo. This is the train station bridge at night, so
you can imagine how pretty the view is from here!
People
often confuse Tower Bridge and London Bridge. I showed some photos of Tower Bridge from the river cruise earlier this
afternoon. It is the one with the two
towers! London Bridge is a fairly boring bridge
during the day, but at night, it is lit up with bright colors. It was so pretty to see the colors reflecting
on the river!
By this
point in the tour, the temperatures dipped down to the low 50’s and the wind
was blowing so strongly that it was hard to stand still enough to take a good
photo! Those light jackets we brought
along were not cutting it and everyone on the tour was shaking because it was
so cold! Luckily, Matt took us on a
detour away from the river, so the buildings helped to block the wind, but it
was still very cold!
We
passed this mural of Shakespeare. This
is one of the things I love about walking tours… we would have never found this
spot on our own.
Around
the corner from that mural, Matt showed us The Clink Prison Museum, which used
to be a medieval prison. It is located
in a back alley one block from the river, but again, we would never have seen
that if not for the walking tour. It was
now 10:45pm and I was so exhausted I could barely keep my eyes
open. The next stop on the tour was
going to be out on London Bridge to see the view of the Tower Bridge lit up at night, but I was just
way too cold and tired to continue on. We told Matt we needed to leave and tipped him
for is efforts. The London Bridge Underground
station was close by, so we walked over there to head back to our hotel.
Exiting
at Kings Cross Station, I was so happy they had an escalator because I really
didn’t have the strength to walk up all those stairs! It was amazing how clean the Underground stations
were in London. Having lived in New York City for six years, I don’t think I
ever saw a subway station this clean!
We got
back to our hotel around 11:30pm (which felt like 12:30am thanks to the time zone
change), and we were fast asleep within minutes of hitting the pillows!
Fitbit Daily Summary… Steps: 24,738, Miles: 11.97, Flights of Stairs: 24 (had I lasted for the end of the walking tour, that would have tipped me over 25,000 steps and over 12 miles today… soooo close!)
Paris and London have been at the top of my travel to-do list for decades. When my parents told me a year in advance that they wanted me to visit them in New York for their 40th wedding anniversary, the wheels started turning. Coming from California, Paris and London are not exactly “on the way” to New York, but if we are already traveling cross-country in that direction, it made perfect sense to tack on a few days in Europe too.
The first thing I needed to do was find out if this was even a possibility in terms of flights. My plan was that we would be away for 2.5 weeks, flying to either Paris or London first, then take the train to the other city, then fly to New York in time for my parents’ anniversary, and then fly back to California. Unfortunately, when this idea originally occurred to me, the airlines had not released their June/July 2019 schedules yet. The schedules were finally released in October for most of the airlines. After checking the options from every airline and at every airport in the Bay Area, I discovered Norwegian Airlines. They are a budget airline offering a direct flight from Oakland to Paris, and they also offer direct flights from Gatwick airport in London to JFK airport near my parents in New York. I loved the idea of a direct flight and not needing to change planes, even if that meant an extremely long 10 hours on the plane for the first leg of our journey! The one downside was that we would be flying out of Oakland, which is a one hour drive from our house on a good day. That flight was scheduled to leave at 8pm so we needed to drive in rush hour, potentially doubling the time to get there. Another logistical issue was that our flight back at the end of the vacation was going to land in San Jose, so we would not be able to drive to the airport in Oakland because there was no way to retrieve our car two weeks later. Hopefully an Uber ride from San Jose to Oakland in rush hour, plus an Uber ride from the San Jose airport back home at the end of the trip, would cost less than paying for two weeks of parking at an off-site lot near the airport!
Norwegian
Air has 3 seating options with different price levels. The cheapest option is very bare bones. They guarantee you will have a seat on the
airplane and you can bring one carry on item weighing less than 10kg (22
pounds), but that’s about it! The ticket
does not include picking your seat, a checked bag, or any food or drink during
the flight (including water!). The
flight attendants won’t even collect your trash as they pass through the
cabin! That was not going to be an
option for us for two long-haul flights, so I looked into the middle tier
options. These tickets cost about $90
more, and included picking our seats on the plane, a checked bag in addition to
our carry on bag, and a meal during the flight.
Since Norwegian is a budget airline, the price for the 10-hour flight
from Oakland to Paris for the middle tier tickets
came to $329 per person! I did check
back on the pricing as the trip dates came closer and the prices went up by
$200 per person, so it pays to buy tickets way in advance. Norwegian uses the 787 Dreamliner planes,
with a 3-4-3 seat configuration in the coach section. The idea of sitting in a middle seat for a
long haul flight didn’t thrill either of us, so we investigated alternate
possibilities. At first we seriously
considered buying 3 tickets so the 2 of us could have our own row. The seats were cheap enough that it wasn’t
such a crazy idea, and if we divided out the price equally, paying less than
$500 per person for a 10 hour direct flight was still a great deal!
Our third
option was to purchase seats in the premium section of the plane. Norwegian does not have a first class
section, but they do have a premium section which is similar to business class
on other airlines. The seats don’t go
fully flat, but they do recline significantly more than the seats in coach, and
the rows are in a 2-3-2 configuration so we could get 2
seats together with one of us at the window and the other on the aisle, and no
extra middle seat between us. The
premium section also includes 2 free checked bags per person, which is helpful
when they only let you bring one 10kg bag as a carry on so we could check the
rolling carry on bags we usually put in the overhead bin on the plane and just
use a backpack for our carry on bag.
Finally, the premium section includes 2 meals on the flight that are
supposed to be better than the meals served in coach, free wine and beer during
meal service times, access to the priority lounge at both Oakland and Gatwick
airports, and fast track access for security at the airport (which is great for
us because we don’t have TSA pre-check or Global Entry). When I priced out the tickets for the London to New York leg of our trip, it was only
$180 difference between the middle and premium tiered tickets, so it was a no-brainer
and we immediately booked those tickets before the price difference went
up! The seats in coach were $500 per
person, and we were able to book our premium seats for $680 each. We thought that was an amazing deal for
business class on an 8-hour international flight! We needed to think through the costs versus
benefits for booking the premium seats on the Paris flight because the price
difference was $500 per ticket more than the middle tier tickets. Since we were not going to want to risk being
stuck in the middle seat with a stranger on the aisle, had we bought the middle
tier tickets we would have purchased the third seat, bringing the price
difference down to $336 per person. This
flight was going to be a red eye, leaving Oakland at 8pm and landing in Paris at 3:30pm the next day, and this was how
we were kicking off a 2-week vacation.
To us, paying $336 per person was well worth it at the slight chance of
being able to sleep on the plane (neither one of us sleeps well on planes in
coach, but maybe we had a chance at falling asleep if we could recline our
seats and have a bit more space around us?), and it seemed like a more relaxing
way to start our vacation. Before we had
a chance to second guess our decision, we purchased the non-refundable tickets
leaving on Thursday, June 20 and arriving in Paris on Friday, June 21. We were officially going to Europe!
Let’s
break up this text-heavy post with some pretty photos from Paris…
Our
flight to New York was on July 2, so we needed to
decide how to split up our 12 days in Europe between Paris and London. We wanted to keep things pretty even, but
since it seemed like there was more to do in Paris than London, we picked Thursday, June 27 as
our travel day between the two cities. That
gave us 5 full days in Paris, plus the evening of the night our plane arrived,
and 4 full days in London, plus the afternoon after the train ride from Paris,
and the morning on our last day because our flight to New York didn’t leave
until 5pm.
There
are 2 main ways to travel from Paris to London. If we chose to fly there, the flight itself
is not very long, but we would need to get from central Paris to either CDG or Orly airport, and we would need to
arrive early enough to allow time to check our bags and go through
security. When the plane landed in London, we would need time to wait for
our bags to arrive, and then we would need to travel from Gatwick or Heathrow
into central London, so the door to door time would
probably be much longer and it would definitely cost more money than our second
option.
The
second option was to take the Eurostar train through the Chunnel (although
apparently only Americans call it the Chunnel haha). The Eurostar train leaves from Gare du Nord
train station, towards the northern side of central Paris, and arrives into St. Pancras
station, towards the northern side of central London, saving us a lot of travel time
and avoiding the logistics of going through the airport. The train ride itself is 2 and a half hours
long, but thanks to the time zone difference, it would only feel like 1 and a
half hours! Eurostar has several tiers
for their seats, but we would be fine with the cheapest option, which allows
you to pick your seat and includes 2 checked bags plus one carry on bag. They do recommend that you arrive at the
station one hour prior to departure, but overall it would still be way faster
than flying. The ticket prices fluctuate
just like airline tickets, and they go on sale 6 months in advance. We were in Puerto Vallarta the day our train tickets went
on sale, so the night we returned home, I immediately logged onto the website
to book our tickets. The Paris to London route operates about once an
hour, so we opted for the 10am train, which arrived in London at 11:30am. That seemed like a perfect train time because
it wasn’t too early in the morning, knowing we would need to finish packing and
eat breakfast before going to the train, and it arrived before lunchtime in London, giving us most of the day left
for touring. The nonrefundable tickets
cost $68 each, and I made sure to pick seats facing forwards on the train.
With
our dates in each city finalized, the next step was to find hotels. At that point, I knew absolutely nothing
about how either city was laid out and it felt very overwhelming to pick which
part of town would be best for us to stay in, let alone picking a specific
hotel! I decided to slow things down and
tackle one city at a time. For each
city, I created a map on Google Maps and plotted out all of the touristy
landmarks that I wanted to visit. That
gave me a good idea of where we’d be spending most of our time, so I tried to
look at hotels in those neighborhoods.
Of course, hotels located very close to the major attractions also tend
to be the most expensive, so I looked at options slightly further away, but
with good access to public transportation.
When we travel domestically, especially for just two or three days over
a long weekend, we often book vacation rentals on AirBNB and VRBO. When we travel internationally, I prefer to
book real hotels because they are more reliable (ie: less likely to cancel our
booking at the last minute, leaving us without a place to stay in a foreign
country!). I have had a lot of success
using Booking.com as they tend to offer good rates on a huge number of hotels
in any given city, with a convenient way to search that inventory to select the
amenities that matter most to me. We did
have one major problem with a hotel in Mexico that cancelled our Christmas/New
Years week hotel just 2 months in advance (even though we booked a year
ahead!), and all of the other hotels in our budget were sold out. Booking.com totally took care of us and found
us a new hotel in the same area where we wanted to stay, and they paid for the
difference in price! After that experience,
I was happy to try their site for hotels for this trip.
In the
end, I selected a boutique hotel called Hotel Chopin in Paris’ 9th arrondissement,
located close to a metro station, and around a mile walk to the Louvre going
south, and Gare du Nord going north. For
London, I knew we would have an
unlimited ride pass for the metro, so being close to a transit hub was very
important. I also wanted to be close to
St. Pancras station as that’s where we would arrive via the Eurostar, and we
could get a direct ride from there to Gatwick at the end of our stay, so it
would mean convenient access when schlepping our luggage. I decided to book our reservation at Central
Hotel, located on a quiet side street directly across from St. Pancras Station
(for the Eurostar) and Kings Cross Station (for the Tube). Central Hotel included a daily free breakfast,
but Hotel Chopin did not. Upon further
thought, I realized that was a good thing because it would allow us to sample
different French pastries and baked goods from different shops and markets each
day! Both hotels offered free
cancellation until a week before the trip, free wifi, a non-smoking room with a
private bathroom, and a hair dryer (a must for me, so I could save on precious
space and weight in my luggage and to avoid the voltage change possibly
destroying my hair dryer from the States!).
The only slight problem was that neither hotel had air
conditioning. Both said they have fans
for the rooms, and I just kept my fingers crossed that it would be cool enough
at night that we could sleep comfortably because the hotels with air conditioning
were much more expensive.
This
seems like a good place to break up the text with a few pretty photos from London…
I spent
the next few months learning as much as possible about things to do, tours to
take, places to eat, how public transit works, and what passes/attractions need
to be purchased/reserved in advance. I
will talk about all of that in more detail as we get to each day of the trip,
but as a general overview, I decided that we would benefit from purchasing a Museum Pass for Paris, but doing our touring in London a la carte. For Paris, they offer something called a
Paris Passlib, which includes a museum pass for 2, 4, or 6 days, an unlimited
ride transit pass for 1-5 days, and a card for a 1 hour Seine River cruise and
a 1-day Hop On Hop Off sightseeing bus, plus the option to add access to the
Eiffel Tower for €20 more. We will have
5 full days in Paris, so I was seriously considering
the 5-day Paris Passlib for €155 per person, but as time went on, I started
second guessing that decision. I broke
down the value of each item included in the pass and realized it was not such a
great deal for us. While the HOHO bus
can be a great way to get an overview of a new city, traffic in Paris makes this bus
impractical. I found a walking tour
which would cover many of the same sites in the same time frame, and it seemed
like a better option for us. Paris is
known to be a wonderful city for walking, so while we did plan to use public
transit to travel longer distances across the city, I was able to arrange our
days such that we will tour sites close together on the same day and not need
as many metro rides. It seemed unlikely
that we would get the full value out of the unlimited ride transit pass, and
would probably save some money by buying the discounted 10-packs of transit tickets
called a carnet, at €1.49 per ride. We
can share those 10-packs between the two of us, so we are less likely to buy
more than we can use. There are multiple
companies who offer cruises along the Seine River, all costing between €10 and
€15 per person. While we might end up
riding with the one company included with the Paris Passlib, it is better to
just buy this tour on our own when we can pick whichever company is convenient
for the day we want to do it, especially since it is a relatively inexpensive
attraction. The added option of spending
€20 per person for 2nd floor access to the Eiffel Tower still baffles me… you can buy
that same thing directly from the Eiffel Tower website for €16.30! Why would you ever spend more than
that?? On top of that, we wanted to go
all the way up to the top of the Tower, so we wouldn’t have purchased that
option anyway. In the end, it seemed that
the only features of the Passlib which we would take advantage of were the Seine River cruise and the museum pass. The 4-day museum pass costs €62 per person and
can be purchased at the tourism desk in the airport, at the tourism office in Central Paris, and at many of the museums
included with the pass. There is no
advantage or reason to pre-purchase the pass, and it can actually be
inconvenient to pre-purchase it because you can only pick it up at the airport
or their tourism offices. Their offices are
located at Gare du Norde and Hotel de Ville, so that would require going out of
our way to retrieve them, and I wouldn’t have selected to pick it up at the
airport in case our flight was delayed and we didn’t arrive until after they
closed, forcing us to return to the airport the following day to get the
passes. They do have an option where
they will mail the pass to your home or deliver it to your hotel, but that
comes with a hefty €24 or €12 shipping fee, respectively. No thanks!
With all of that in mind, I decided that we would buy our 4-day museum
pass after arriving in Paris. If our flight landed on time, then we could
get it at the airport, and if not, we could get it at a museum.
For Paris, I added up the admission
charges to all of the museums and attractions that we planned to visit, and the
museum pass easily paid for itself, so it made sense to get it. For London, all of the museums we planned
to visit (or even slightly considered visiting just as a rainy-day option) were
FREE! How great is that?! We had no interest in the pricier attractions
like the London Eye and Harry Potter World, and we were happy to see all of the
palaces and castles from the outside (both to save time and money because we
have fewer days to tour London). There were a few tours we wanted to take
which would cost extra money, but none of them are included in any of the
tourism passes, so in the end, it just made more sense to book each thing
individually. Funny enough, our approach
to London is exactly the opposite of Paris in that although we bought a
museum pass but no transit pass in Paris, for London, we did buy the transit pass
and skipped the tourism pass!
There
are many different transit pass options in London. By far the cheapest option is the Navigo which
costs about 22 Pounds for 7 days of unlimited pubic transit. The problem is, those 7 days must
specifically fall from a Monday until the following Sunday. We arrive in London on a Thursday and leave on a
Tuesday, so that pass was not an option for us.
Instead, we purchased the 7-day Travelcard, which can be used over any 7
consecutive days. The Travelcard costs £35.10
per person, and can be added to their contactless transit card called an Oyster
Card. The Oyster Card must be bought
first for £5, but that money is refundable when you return the card at the end
of your trip. If we didn’t buy the
Travelcard, London’s public transit has a daily
cap of about £7, meaning if we paid per ride, we would not be charged for any
rides after we reached that £7 cap.
Because we have 4 full days in London, plus most of the day on the day
we arrive and all morning on the day we depart, I went back and forth on if it
made sense to get the unlimited ride pass since we would probably just break
even in the end, but we had the chance to save a little money if we didn’t use
public transit as much on one day. It
was going to be very close whichever way we did it, so it made more sense to
get the unlimited and not have to worry about topping up extra money on our
Oyster Cards throughout the week.
Once
all of my planning was complete, I created this calendar to hang on the wall in
our hotels to keep track of our daily agenda.
Of course, things did get moved around a bit, but we mostly stuck with
the original plan:
That
concludes the planning section of this trip report, so now it’s time for the
fun part… a detailed account of each day of our action-packed trip to Paris and London! I took over two thousand photos on this trip,
so it will take me some time to organize everything and write up my posts. In the meantime, I will leave you with more
pretty photos from Paris and London…
Dana's Destination Diary 