Simply Stephanie: London BABY!

So those words 'LONDON BABY' may or may not have come out of my mouth a number of times as we spent our first four days of our adventure in LONDON England. Sadly my husband did not fully appreciate the friends reference or the time we were turned around and I wanted to go inside the map, but I personally found it a riot.

PRE TRIP

Monday night we had the idea to go to bed early, wake up even earlier and therefore be able to sleep on the flight. There were a number of errors in our plan however as I worked late on Monday and therefore didn't even get home until almost nine so going to bed early was all relative. We then got up at 4am in hopes that by 7pm when we left on a jet plane (apparently also not what someone wants you to be singing during the three hour wait for the plane, I swear I am a riot to travel with!). That however was not the case as even with sleeping pills and realistically being at a point where we should have been able to sleep we couldn't. The flight was hot and uncomfortable and crammed and we were under pressure to be sleeping so it made the whole thing a million times worse.

DAY 1

London started after the flight from hell, so pretty much we had no sleep already and had been up for almost 24 hours when we got into the city. Getting from Heathrow to London was super easy, we had our backpacks and our Oyster cards and we were good to go. We got off the tube and headed to our hotel, which was so budget we had to pay to check our bags. Anyways we figured we would hit the ground running and try to fight off the jet-leg. We started off in Trafalgar Square and the National Portrait Gallery. Most museums in London are free which is fantastic, it also made us feel better when we realized we were way too exhausted to appreciate anything we were looking at. At this point my feet were already killing me and we were struggling to stay awake. We stopped for a snack where we fell in love with the coffee shop Pret, picked up our passes for later in the week and made our way towards Buckingham Palace. Along the way we saw some horse and decided to stop and see what was happening, turns out it was the changing of the guard, which was pretty awesome to stumble upon. From Buckingham we made our way to Hyde Park where we wanted around, stopping frequently at benches to rest our feet. Lets also not this is the first and last day I wore anything other than my running shoes. We then walked up Brompton Road, stopped in at Harrods and window shopped our way to the Victoria and Albert Museum where we were meeting a high school friend of mine when she was done work. From there she took us to a local pub for a few pints with some coworkers and then we hit up a little diner for dinner. We made it a relatively early night as we were absolutely exhausted and knew we had an early morning.

Trafalgar Square.

National Gallery.

Changing of the Guard.

Buckingham Palace.

Hyde Park.

DAY 2 - Harry Potter Day!
Our second day in London started off wonderfully, well wonderful in that we left the hotel early, not wonderful in that regardless of spending $50 on a power converter, my straightener died. Anyways, we were ahead of schedule and had given ourselves plenty of time to make it to the Harry Potter Studios. We got off our tube, which did say it ended at the right location, but the directions online said to take a train and we were hungry for breakfast. We stopped at a small grocery store to grab some breakfast and snacks for the day and made our way to the train station. After speaking with a ticket sales person who thought he was clever and suggested we fly our brooms to Harry Potter we got on the train that he told us. Only we got on the train about five minutes before he told us, this therefore resulted in us getting on the wrong train. It was going to the right location, but it was the slow train. The slow train makes lots of stops. The slow train would take about 2 hours to get there. We only had one an hour, the fast train should have taken twenty minutes. I got stressed. The tickets for the tour were timed tickets. We thought it through and decided to risk getting off at one of the main stops and hoping that the fast train stopped there. We ran to the fast train location only to find it roped off. I obviously started to cry (I am so much fun to travel with). Then got it together and asked someone else who was waiting what was happening. Turns out they don't let you on the fast track platform ahead of time because the trains go by so quickly. We were in the right spot and would make it on time. Then there is an announcement the train would be ten minutes late, we no longer would make it on time. So we get to the final train station where a shuttle bus waits, we hurry on the shuttle bus and practically run up to the ticket window. We are 20 minutes late for the time on our ticket, as I explain to what we went through to the girl behind the window trying to play on the sympathy card she informs us that the tickets are actually good for a half hour after the time printed. That would have been a good thing for them to tell you ahead of time. So crazy stress and crazy worry for nothing. Even with the not so fun journey to Harry Potter Universal Studios Tour, it was 100% worth it and I would highly recommend it to any Harry Potter fan. We go the audio guide which was totally worth splurging. The voice is Draco Malfoy and it was wonderful. They explain a lot of details that you would not get just from looking at the sets and displays. It was so interesting and so much fun. You were able to see the actual costumes the actors wore and the makeup and the props and everything. We literally spent all day there. I thought we would have had time to head back to London and spend some more time at the Victoria and Albert museum, but in the end we were even late to meet our friend Mel that night. We met up with Mel and walked past Harrods all lit up, we did a little shopping and went for authentic British dinner at a little diner. Brent had fish and chips and I had bangers and mash. It was wonderful.

Sorting Hat.

Harry Potter.

Butterbeer.

Knight Bus.

Bridge.

Death Eaters in Diagon Alley.

Castle.

Harrods at night.

DAY 3
Day 3 was a wonderful day. We did and saw so much, it really was fantastic. This was the first day of our London City Pass and I was determined to make it worth it. We started our morning by walking to the Tower Bridge, it was a great walk because it was only 20 minutes and we were able to see a lot of cool things. We went up the Tower Bridge and were able to look out on the city from the top and walk the walkway, we also got to see the old mechanical room that showed how it was raised. From there we went to the HMS Belfast, which was actually really great. It was one of the places that had free audio guides and if we had more time we could have easily spent half a day there. We could not however because we were on very strict schedule. It was interesting though because it is an old retired navy ship that had actual mannequins set up so you could see what it used to be like and sound effects and everything. It was so real that I was kind of creeped out thinking they would start moving at any moment. From there we made our way to Westminster Abby, passing parliament and big ben on our way. We went through the church quickly, again it would have been easy to spend half a day there with the free audio guide. I was shocked with the number of people buried there and the grader of the church itself. We left there in a rush and started our journey out to Windsor to see Windsor Castle. We made it to the station where we were to switch from the tube to the train and had three minutes to make the train or wait half an hour. As a result we were those people sprinting through the station. We made it on time and glad we did. Once in Windsor we grabbed a quick lunch (the first we had eaten as we kept thinking we would find food sooner) and that is when we fell in love with Eat. The best pink lemonade I have ever had, made with raspberries, YUMM! We walked the streets of windsor to the castle where we spent the next few hours wondering the grounds, watching the guards, and standing in amazement of Queen Mary's doll house. After we wondered around the little hamlet a little more before making our journey back to meet Mel at Covet Garden.

Tower Bridge.

Inside the HMS Belfast.

Titanic...sort of.

Inside HMS Belfast.

Big Ben.

The beautiful Windsor Castle.

Look at the bayonet.

No fear!

A little London mist by our friend big ben.

DAY 4

Our last day in London was yet another great day. It was wonderful spending the full day with Mel catching up and having her show us some of her favourite spots of London. We started the day with a walk from our hotel to the Tower of London. It was beautiful because the old mote was filled with hand made poppies for Remembrance Day. Here we were also able to purchase a poppy which is so much cooler than what we have in Canada as they are made of paper with real little buttons in the middle. We also proved my travel theory where if you arrive early, you can do so much more. We went right in to view the crown jewels with no waiting and were even able to ride the conveyor belt past them more than once. From there we walked along the Thames River, passing under the London Bridge on route to Borough Market. Here we had what Mel has dubbed 'the worlds best brownies'. I feel like this claim can be pretty legit as she is a world traveler like no other. I said they better be good for how expensive they were. Here we had lunch, Brent got his pie and mash and I had a Venison sausage. Also at the market, Brent fell in love with their bottle shop and spent the longest time trying to figure out which to drink then and which to carry around for the rest of the trip. The perks of European cities is the ability to drink anywhere. So we strolled the market Brent with his beer and me with a Pims. From the market we hoped on the tube to head to Kensington Palace. The museum was wonderful, it was all royal dresses through the decades, and had an entire room dedicated to Victoria and Alberts love story. Not to mention you got to pretend to be hanging out with Will and Kate, it was like a dream. From there we headed back to the hotel to grab our packs and then on to the bus station to head to Paris.