London

Tuesday, 12/25/2007

We’ve arrived! (London Heathrow airport, 1 pm, GMT)

We met our good friend, Davin, and our soon-to-be good friend, Trent, at the London Heathrow airport.  From the airport, we took a bus to Paddington Station, which was a short walk from our Days Inn hotel.  Upon check-in, we discovered that our hotel room was so tiny.  Good thing that most of our time in London was spend exploring the city because we probably would've gone crazy being packed in like sardines!

We decided the best way to prevent jet lag (and minimize time stuffed in our hotel/closet) was to avoid the much desired nap and “walk it off.” Had we known the extent to which we’d “walk it off” initially, who knows if we would have chosen the adventure that followed!

With most places closed for Christmas, the internet wasn’t much help finding us a standard walking tour that would yield any “sure thing” hits for first time London-ers as ourselves, so we decided to wing it and follow our map, street signs, and appetites for our afternoon stroll.

First stop, Winter “Wonderland” in Hyde Park, supposedly an up-and-coming tourist attraction during the holiday season, complete with a toboggan slide and ice skating rink (London’s largest…yea right!). While winter wonderland was a bust, it at least gave us an opportunity to walk through Hyde Park, which was beautiful, and given the time of year and temperature, we had the place virtually to ourselves. We exited the park hungry, stopped into an “authentic English pub” for a pint and perhaps some fish 'n chips. This turned out to be the first of many non-authentic English experiences that we would encounter during our 3 days in London. A very commercial Irish pub probably best describes this place, so we settled for Guinness and headed elsewhere for dinner (kitchen being closed didn’t help our cause either!).

Since the kitchen at the pub was closed, we instead found a small Italian “caffe” which displayed strange three-eyed marzipan desserts.  This was where we had our first  official English breakfast experience which consisted of bacon (in England, bacon really means Canadian ham), runny eggs, bread, and the infamous “brown sauce”.

After our meal we headed over to Trafalgar Square to look at the world-famous Christmas tree, a present given to Britain from Norway every year for the past 60 years as a token of friendship and gratitude for assistance during World War II.  From there, we walked to Buckingham Palace and practically had the whole place to ourselves. Along the way we saw Big Ben and the London Eye for the first time.

We started our way back to the hotel, but somehow managed to get lost.  We thought our Days Inn was only a short distance away once we saw Hyde Park, however we mistakenly took a wrong turn and ended up on the opposite side of the park not too far from Notting Hill. This detour probably added an extra 5 miles to the walk!  Finally finding our way, we were never so happy in our lives to see a Days Inn!

One would assume that twelve hours of travelling and the 13-mile walk would’ve made us want to crash immediately upon arrival to our hotel room, however the excitement of the trip was apparently still strong, as we played cards well into the wee hours of the night. Thus, the beginning of what we liked to refer to as a “vampire” lifestyle had begun (sleep during the day, play at night)!

Wednesday, 12/26/2007

The activities of the day before apparently left us very tired…we ended up sleeping until noon!

The weather on Tuesday had been a bit dreary and very London-like, so we were excited to wake up to the sun streaming in through the window.  Eager to get out and enjoy the day, we quickly got ready and jumped on the Underground to begin our second day in London.

We decided to visit Covent Garden, a thriving piazza famous for its shops, bars, restaurants, theatres, and street performers.  Sure enough, we encountered a street performer within minutes of our arrival--a knife-juggling acrobat wowing the crowd with his daring moves.

Dinner that night was in Covent Garden at a Mediterranean restaurant where we spent several hours enjoying delicious food.  Afterwards, we took the Underground to the London Tower, but discovered that it was closed. Instead we walked around the outside and watched ice skaters in front of the building. From there we walked over to the London Bridge and took loads of pictures.

Still in the mood for more sightseeing, we hopped back on the Underground to check out the London Eye, the tallest observation wheel in the world.  It was, of course, closed when we got there so we changed our plans to finding an authentic English pub.  We tried to follow a local's directions to the nearest pub, but ended up getting lost.  No worries though, because we managed to stumble upon a great pub called, The Duke of Sussex.  The bartender was brash and perhaps even a bit rude to us—just what we were looking for!  Hours of playing cards, drinking, and listening to Rod Stewart (yikes!) had caused us to work up quite an appetite.  Nothing in the world sounded better to us than fish 'n chips.  After all, how hard could it be to find fish 'n chips in London?

We searched for other pubs/restaurants that might be open, but because of the holiday (Boxing Day) every place we tried was closed. While walking aimlessly around the city, we stopped to ask a local where we could find an open kitchen and he recommended China Town.  So off to China Town we went...

Because it was so late at this point, the Underground was closed so we had the choice of catching a bus, getting a taxi, or walking. After our half-marathon walk the day before, we had decided to not take any chances on getting lost so we hailed a taxi to China Town. The taxi dropped us off at the entrance to China Town, but an Irish pub called O’Neill’s caught our interest instead. Finally, an open restaurant with an open kitchen! Ordering proved to be quite a task though. We had a French server who didn’t speak any English, belive it or not. After much struggles with ordering and straightening out the bill, we moved upstairs and engaged in several hours of beer consumption and dancing. Who cares if we were the only people in the bar dancing?  We had a great time!

Apparently we had really danced our socks off…literally. When we got back to our hotel room, Matt took off his shoes to reveal that his toes had completely ripped through one of his socks!

Thursday, 12/27/2007

Zzzzzz...didn't wake up until 10 am ( so much for trying to break away from our "vampire" lifestyle).  We started the day by taking the Underground to see Big Ben and Westminster Abbey.  Big Ben (the giant clock that keeps official time for Great Britain located at the Houses of Parliament) was absolutely majestic during the day.  We also did a quick tour of Westminster Abbey, the burial place for Great Britain's highly-respected monarchs.

Our next stop was St. Paul’s Cathedral, where a Christmas service was being held. The cathedral was amazing--beautiful architecture, paintings, and sculptures.

Not wanting to miss the London Eye again, we  hurried our way across town via the Underground to the giant wheel.  This time around the attraction was still open, and thankfully the line wasn’t very long either.  While on board we took some amazing photos of the London skyline---what a fabulous view!  135 meters high in the sky (that's 442 feet for us non-metric Americans) was enough to make Katrina feel a bit quesy!

After experiencing our breathtaking bird's eye view of the city, we were starving. We still had not had fish ‘n chips, so our mission for that night became a hunt for an authentic fish ‘n chips pub. We decided to take a boat tour on the Thames River, thinking that one of the stops might bring us closer to finding a pub. On board, we asked the one of the crew members where to find a decent pub and he recommended a place called the O₂.  Had he explained what the O₂ was in greater detail, there’s a chance that we would’ve avoided going there. However, being the naïve and trusting tourists we were, we took his word and were dropped off in front of a giant concert arena/mall/restaurant mix of everything we were trying to avoid…Americanization at its finest. There was even a restaurant called the American Bar & Grill! At that point, we were so hungry that we actually contemplated eating there, however something inside us pressed on for an authentic pub. This was our last night in London and we were not going to settle for American food!!

We asked a police officer at the O₂ for directions to a local fish 'n chips pub and he recommended a restaurant called, Mr. Fast Fries.  Unfortunately, following his directions turned out to be a wild goose-chase in a sketchy part of London. Long story short, we walked around town for what seemed like hours searching for Mr. Fast Fries, discovered that it was a complete dump, stopped at a couple of pubs that didn’t serve food, asked locals where we could find a pub that served decent fish ‘n chips, only to lead us right back to the O₂! We ended up going to the only restaurant that was still open at 10:30 at night—a Spanish restaurant called Tapas Tapas.

After dinner, we took the river boat back to Embarkment Station, started to walk around but we were still nervous about getting lost again, so we jumped on a double-decker back to our hotel.

We had an early plane to catch to Paris the following morning, so we stayed up late packing up our stuff, probably getting two hours of sleep at the most.  What a night!