Lessons from London - Part 2

A little bit more about our London adventures...

Outside Westminster Abbey

After our tour of the Abbey, we decided to visit Piccadilly Circus, which is kind of like London's Times Square. Here there are lots of theaters but our sights were set on the shopping. We had gotten a tip that Lillywhites is a great place to buy sports souvenirs and we were not disappointed. The store was huge...we only visited three of the four of five, maybe even six floors. And we picked up just a few things on the way. :)

Lesson 6: The Exchange Rate will trick you!! Today 1 British Pound is the equivalent of $1.66. Which means when we got excited about a shirt that was on sale for 10.99 Pounds, that really meant $18. And when your grand total comes to 100 Pounds, that really means you spent $166. Your money does not go very far in London so beware!!

Some of our shopping bags

After all of that shopping we thought we deserved a break. So we stopped at a British pub. There are tons of them everywhere and they are so cute! Actually, everything in London was exactly like you see in the movies. A lot of the pubs we saw had fun creative names (The Queen's Head, Sherlock Holmes, Ship and Shovell) and had the bar portion on the bottom floor and a more formal dining area on the second floor. Separated by tiny, steep staircases.

Lesson 7: Get up and order your food at the bar. Not sure if this is the case for every single place in London or Europe but it was the case at a few of the places we tried. Especially at The Comedy Pub where there was one man working the entire bar and restaurant area. They won't greet you at the door, seat you or send servers to take your order so it's best to get up and order as soon as you're ready.

This one was The Comedy Pub where we had a pint of Carling, fish and chips and meat pie.

The London Eye is a giant ferris wheel on the South Bank of the River Thames. It also happened to be right next to our hotel and part of the view outside our window. It was huge and moved VERY slowly. Apparently so slowly that it does not even stop for you to get off...you just kind of hop out as it moves towards the ground! This was another recommendation but it was not something we ended up having time for. I think it would have given a magnificent view of the entire city.

Here's the London Eye from right underneath

London Eye straight back, Hotel is the building on the right

One of my favorite moments was enjoying complimentary wine and cheese in the Library at our hotel on Friday evening. Our view of Big Ben was incredible. It was so nice to just slow down for a second and enjoy our surroundings and the fact that we got to spend time in such a great city.

Our next adventure was to conquer Harrod's, a very upscale department store located in the Knightsbridge area of London. We got there with only an hour and a half to shop until it closed (see Lesson 5) but we got a taste of the shopping experience. The building itself is old and beautiful and has SEVEN floors. We just scraped the surface of all there is to discover here.

Lesson 8: You could (and probably should) spend an entire day at Harrod's. You have your standard men's wear, women's wear, luxury goods, etc but also a perfumery, personal shopping, an accessories section, gift wrapping service, wine spirits and cigars, toy kingdom, technology, furniture, and so on. We spent most of our time in the Food Hall buying gifts.

On Saturday morning we got up bright and early to pack up and see a few more sights. We walked through St. James Park...

...to Buckingham Palace. We wanted to see the Changing of the Guards, which takes place every other day during this time of year. Even an hour before the ceremony, the area was crammed with people.

Lesson 9: Allow lots of time to get a good spot if you are really interested in Changing of the Guards. Otherwise, it's fun to be in the area but maybe a bit overrated. There is much pomp and circumstance surrounding this very old tradition. They still make a big deal out of this ceremony so it's fun to experience.

The Tower of London was our final stop before we were off to the airport for our next adventure. This is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames. It's known as Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress and is home to the Crown Jewels....which were breathtaking. It's illegal to take pictures so you'll just have to imagine them.

From the outside

With London Bridge in the background

After our visit to the Tower, we headed back to the hotel, hopped in a cab for Heathrow. We checked our bags, thought we had plenty of time for dinner and beer and ended up having to run through the airport to get on our flight! What a hilarious time!

Lesson 10: Put London on your bucket list. It's an incredible place full of world history and lots of activities. I am already planning to go back someday and spend a longer period of time there.

I'm sure there are plenty of details that I've left out so I hope I get to share my stories, pictures and videos with you soon. Also, I've been working on loading my GoPro videos to my YouTube channel. You can check them out here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrh4FvTHZKFdIShDC4HkR6RtJcMonr4Zg. I will also start a South Africa playlist once I get home (the internet here is slow and it takes at least two hours to upload one video). Cheers!