Day 16- London

Saturday, May 8 (Day 16)

Our full day in London! We woke up at 7am to get a good start on our day.

We showered with the travel size toiletries that the airlines gave us and our shower faced the mirror. But it was already fogged up from Lisa’s shower.

We met downstairs at 8 to get breakfast. We had a full English breakfast which included eggs, fried or scrambled, sausage, bacon, toast, baked beans, coffee, and juice. So delicious!

Then we called the airlines and the assured us that our luggage would arrive at the hotel later tonight.

Then, we set off for the city. We bought a hop-on-hop-off, double-decker bus tour to travel around on. It was cold and rainy out so this was a very good option for us. We saw SO much! We saw Hyde Park which was absolutely beautiful with all of its flowers, fields, and trees. People were jogging, playing with dogs, and feeding squirrels. The squirrels were very friendly and would climb up people’s legs. Then we went to Princess Diana’s memorial fountain which was a circular fountain in her memory. Then to Buckingham Palace which was HUGE! There were two guards there but they were inside the gate and we weren’t able to get any pictures with them, but I got pictures OF them. We saw Big Ben (parliament), which we found out was as tall as 21 double-decker busses stacked on top of one another. We saw the London Eye, but didn’t ride on it because it was 15 euros and we had just spent a lot on the bus tour. We saw St. Paul’s cathedral and then we rode the bus to the London Bridge and the Tower Bridge (which people always think is the London Bridge). We also saw the Waterloo train station and Shakespeare’s dome. On the way to all of these places there were cute little parks and benches facing ponds with swans swimming in them. So beautiful! If it wasn’t so cold and rainy, there is NO doubt in my mind that I would move there right out of college (although it is quite expensive). The architecture is amazing as well.

After walking around all day and eating at a local diner for lunch (fish n chips and a beer) we started to head back to the hotel to make our contiki meeting at 6pm. We were walking backwards along the bus track to find a stop close to us but we ended up walking so far backwards that we would have made it to our hotel by then. So we decided to take a taxi back to our hotel. It was soo much cheaper than in Italy!

We got back and rushed to the contiki room since we were a few minutes late and we were informed that the meeting wasn’t for an hour.

So since out bags STILL weren’t at the hotel, we spent that hour trying to figure out what was going on, again.

We met at the contiki room at 7 and went over procedures and met the other people on our tour. Everyone seemed really cool so far!

We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant. We did NOT see Abby Road nor platform 9 3/4 as we had wanted to see.