Mind the Gap

I am finally getting around to writing about our incredibly amazingly awesome trip this summer - London was our first stop.

Well....actually - Charlotte, NC was our first stop.  We got stuck there for a night after U.S. Airways cancelled our flight to London for "mechanical issues."  I wish I was the type of person who could just say "C'est la vie" and be okay with it.  But alas, I'm not - I cried instead and spent hours on the phone to get us a flight out the next day. 

We flew into Heathrow and got to London around 6am and then went straight to our hotel to drop things off.  When we got there (and since we had to pay for the hotel the night before anyway) they told us that we got free full English breakfast everyday of our stay - including that morning.  Ryan was in heaven with all of the meat, eggs, bread, etc.  I think I had cereal and then threw up.  Yay.  The Hotel Russell was awesome though - so happy we decided to stay where we did.

After breakfast and a little sleep we headed out and walked around to see the sites.  We did a fun walk along the Thames, had fish and chips (that were decent, not amazing), and pretty much just took everything in.  It was a very laid back day - extremely hard on the feet though.  Some of our stops included:

Kings Cross

I will always wish that Harry Potter actually existed

Tower of London

(we didn't actually pay to go inside and now I wish we had)

Tower Bridge

 The Thames and St. Paul's.

London Eye

Us with our friend Big Ben

 

Parliament Building

Westminster Abbey

 

 We couldn't resist taking a picture with the red telephone booths

The next day it rained and rained and rained.  We didn't do much outside at first - we ventured to Buckingham Palace and then went to the British Museum.  The British Museum is SO spectacular.  Unfortunately every other person in the city had the same idea as us and visited the British Museum as well so it was very very crowded. 

Our hotel was right by the British Museum so we went back and waited the rain out.  It eventually let up so we wandered around Hyde Park (which is gigantic).  We found the Pan statue which made my day. 

 We also went back to our river walk and took in the views of London at night - beautiful.

The next day we departed on a day trip to Warwick Castle, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Oxford.

Warwick was really fun - they've preserved this Medieval castle well and the experience is supposed to take you back to the time period.  They hold jousting touranments, archery shows, and have knights and princesses walking around.  We only got a to spend a couple of hours there since we were on a bus tour but we really enjoyed it.

There were some gorgeous views atop the castle of the English countryside

 Statford (birthplace of Shakespeare) was fun as well - actors performed lines from Shakespeare's plays and we got a quick tour of the home he grew up in.

Oxford is just architecturally magnificent.  We only had about an hour so we didn't get to see all of the grounds but it was a definite highlight of the trip.

Our tour bus dropped us off in the evening near Buckingham so we actually got to see it without pouring down rain.

On our very last day in London we had a little bit of time before our train left to Paris so we did some more walking and toured some more museums near Trafalgar Square

We didn't want to leave without taking a picture of our hotel - it was huge and so so pretty.

Ryan in Trafalgar Square

Things I wish we would have done differently:

Spent money that we were too cheap to spend on tours of Parliament and Westminster

Actually planned out when we were going to see a show - it never happened (probably would have if we would have had our missed day though)

Found GOOD Indian food - we spent way too much money on some very subpar Indian food.

 

 All in all, we loved London.  I'm looking forward to going back because there is a lot that we didn't get to do/see.  Paris was my favorite though.  Sometime in the near future I'll post about our time in the "City of Love."