Travel Tuesday || London Part One
After mailing a few postcards out of a Dublin post office, we hightailed it to the airport to make our way to London! We flew into London City Airport, bought our Oyster cards, and made our way into the city. People might think the London Underground is confusing to navigate, but once you figure out how the lines connect, it’s simple! (Or maybe it was because we had done a lot of studying before going…)
We checked into our hotel, marveled at how close we were to everything, and promptly left to explore the city at sunset. We found Southwark Cathedral, interesting alleys and sculptures, and finally wound up at HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge. It got chilly fast, so we ate and went back to watch The Great British Baking Show at the hotel.
A good, long sleep is all we needed to revamp for the next day of sight-seeing! JUST KIDDING! You thought we got to sleep a long time? No way! I had big plans to see Abbey Road at 7:30 a.m., bright, early, cold, and with as little traffic as possible. It was a great idea, except for how sleepy we were! We weren’t as alone as I thought we would be though. A group of non-English-speaking tourists asked Caleb to take their photo and got a big kick out of the whole ordeal.
Next stop on our tour de force of London was King’s Cross Station. The first photo you see below is St Pancras Station, which is right beside King’s Cross. It looks a bit grander than King’s Cross on the outside, but there isn’t a Platform 9 and 3/4 in there! King’s Cross is very, very busy, and the Harry Potter section is even more extremely busy.
My prideful moment of the day: every person is supposed to take a normal photo and a jumping photo at the photo opp. You may have noticed, I’m a jumper. When they took my photo, the photographer told everyone that that was how it was supposed to be done, and showed off my photo as an example. So there, all those jumping photos I took in high school finally paid off.
I do a lot lot lot of research before I go on a trip, especially one of this magnitude. Before we made it to London, I was so nervous about navigating the Tube. Once we started, though, I loved it. (Well, I loved everything minus the loud screeching noises on the less-oiled segments. However, no one else freaked out, so neither did I.) My favorite part about the Tube is that about 10 seconds before the train arrives in the station, you can feel the cool pulse of air come rushing out of the tunnel.
We happened upon plenty of things that weren’t on our original list of sights, like a statue of Sherlock Holmes, and an apartment in which Charles Dickens lived. Places that we did intend to go: Daunt Books and Regent Street, both of which were decorated up like it was holiday season! We also found Liberty London, where I fully intended to spend money on their iconic fabrics. Unfortunately, all I did there was take photos of their creations, because that was just a bit cheaper.
Perhaps one of the neatest things we did in London was seeing “The Merchant of Venice” in Shakespeare’s Globe. We were on the very top deck with a great view, all with the exception of the sun glaring at us. (In London, sun? What?!) We were given paper hats that kept the sun out of our eyes. Once I got over the fact that it was not stylish at all, it was really quite nice. Being there felt like a trip back to the 1500s, which was more than I could have asked for.
After a full day of feeling super cultured in London, we went to Barbecoa for dinner. Barbecoa is a Jamie Oliver restaurant (don’t know who that is? Just trust me, he’s a famous chef.) For fear of looking anywhere near not-posh, I did not take any photos. It was dark and moody inside, and we got giant servings of ribs and whatever meat Caleb ordered. Right outside the windows stood St. Paul’s Cathedral. Its presence is very dominating, and you can see it for quite a distance. The whole of London is very pretty at night, with lots of blue and orange lights outlining most bridges and structures.
It was a long day of sight-seeing, and yet we hadn’t even really made it too far out of Southwark. Next week, you’ll see ALL the sights that our tired legs carried us to all over the city of London. Today, I’ll leave you with Caleb ironing his clothes for our photoshoot the next day.
