Trip to London

After Paris, we boarded the chunnel train (which travels underneath the English Channel and can get up to 186mph!!!) and arrived in London. The trip only took about 2.5 hours. The tickets are expensive ($200) but its so easy and the trains are really comfortable.

We got to London and went straight to the hostel after a stop at McDonalds. McDonalds was our resturaunt of choice becasue it was still reasonably priced. I remember paying 1.5 pounds for a snickers bar, thats almost $3 for a Snickers bar! We arrived at the hostel in a black cab and found out how small our room would be, the toilet was practically in the shower! We still paid a hefty amount for the room, the exchange rate for the pound to the dollar on the trip was around 1.6. A $60 a charge whenever pulling out 100 pounds from the ATM is madness. We Americans need to get our economy back on track!!

After we woke up, I went down the street in the rain to get some breakfast. I bought two muffins and an orange juice for 6 pounds ($10). We decided to get a tour bus pass to get acquainted with the city. This would have been great in the summer, but in the winter it looks like this:

We went by the Buckingham Palace and saw some guards standing out front, which was pretty neat. We didnt have a chance to see the changing of the guards, because it was way too cold and rainy to wait.

After we saw the palace, we got back on the bus and got a good look at the fogged up windows from the lower section of the tour bus. We headed to St.Paul's Cathedral (built during the 17th century), which was used for the marriage of Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer. It was pretty impressive.

We got back on the bus and headed for the Houses of Parliament and to see the famous clock tower of London, Big Ben. You can actually sit in on a court hearing if you pay some pounds! The Parliament is the center of political life for the UK.

This is a view from the London Eye ferris wheel (it's 27 pounds per person to ride, but was told it would be worth it.......I didn't agree, maybe on a sunny day).  The Houses of Parliament and the London Eye run along the Thames River.

The Big Ben Clock tower.

More rain.

We found that London starts getting dark at about 4pm in the winter. We decided that the bus tour was not worth it. Most of the time we were stuck in traffic or could not see out of the foggy windows, so we decided to walk around the next day. Well, the next day it was still raining, and not fun to walk around in, so we decided to see a movie in Leicester Square. We saw Sherlock Holmes in the Empire Movie theatre, which is one of the biggest movie theatres in the world, the theatre can hold around 1300 people in one room to watch a movie!! Each ticket was pounds 11.50, about 17-18 dollars!!!!! We didnt know it would be that expensive, but we were tired of walking around in the rain.....so we paid (theme of the trip).

We saw a play called Avenue Q around this area too, it was a knockoff of Sesame Street, and the main characters were young adults trying to find thier way in life. It's a really funny show. Some of the songs were: "What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?", "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist", "I Wish I Could Go Back to College". One of the songs was called "The More You Love Someone, the More You Want to Kill Them". At this point in our rainy, cold, mad cause were getting ripped off, crowded trip, we could completely relate to this song. The look on Hil's face below kinda sums up our experience in London:

 We both thought that London would have been a great experience if the weather were better, and if the sun were shining. As we were walking to the Underground Metro to leave for Belgium, we saw the sun for the first time in London. This definetly added to our frustrations with the city. I would like to see London again to change my perception of the city, when the exchange rate is in favor of the dollar, and definetly in the summer.