London!

London! Oh, London! You exceeded my expectations by far! I honestly wasn't expecting a lot from London. I mean, I've been to Paris, and that is the most beautiful city in the world, so London just had no hope in my book. Boy, was I wrong. It was soooo beautiful and amazing there. The old mixed with the new, the people, which, by the way, the women there are styling big time! Yeah, I loved London!

When we finally got into town, it was pretty late in the evening, around 8:30pm. We went straight from the Waterloo train station to the metro, and ended up at the Oxford Underground station just a few blocks for our hotel. Unfortunately, things are never as easy as they seam on google maps and we got lost for a good 30 minutes. A super helpful guy waiting by the metro busted out his smart phone and helped us figure out how to get to the hotel. Thanks, awesome London dude! Once we got to the hotel, the real fun began! 

We walked to the check-in desk and the receptionist informed us that we had a private check-in on the 8th floor! Whoa....fancy shmancy! Nathan, the receptionist, and I all headed up the elevator to the 8th floor for our special little check-in! We got everything in order and headed to our room on the 9th, top, floor! As soon as Nathan and I walked into the elevator to take us up, we looked at each other and at the same time said, "We are soooo underdressed!" and let out a good laugh!

The room was amazing and I miss it already. It had an American outlet in it! I could use my blow dryer!!!! You can't ask for more than that!

Okay, so we hit the hay and woke up the next morning all refreshed and ready to get our London on!

First things first, we left our room and headed down the road to the "laundrette!" We had a nice chunk of dirty clothes that needed attending too! We made it inside and were instantly greeted by the MEANEST worker lady person ever, I like to refer to her as Hitler. She was just grumpy and mean and had all these little rules for everyone about using the machines there.

 At one point, while we were sitting in front of the washer waiting for our clothes to finish, I busted out my camera and started taking pictures of....washers. So exciting, right? Well, it must have been too exciting because miss "I hate happiness" quickly nipped my fun in the bud. "NO TAKING PICTURES IN HERE!" Really? Where's the sign? It's a laundromat for heaven's sake! Luckily we survived that experience and left soon after with a load of freshly laundered clothing!

We dropped our clothes off at the hotel and then headed out to find some adventures! We headed over to Oxford street to find Nathan a coat, but it began to warm up ever so slightly, so we decided to pass and continue on with our journey. We headed over towards Trafalgar Square, which was not really intentional, but happened, and then continued on towards Buckingham Palace. We walked through the park right over by the gates of the palace and then made our way over to the Queen herself's house! Honestly, it was a teensy bit disappointing. I was imaging more. Still amazing, though! We spent some time just wandering around that area and then headed towards the London Eye. On our way there, we ended up over by Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and all of those fun historic buildings! We walked through the square agreeing that we would go back tomorrow and go through Westminster Abbey. Over the bridge we walked to the London Eye. Somehow we got sucked into the "London Dungeons" tour trap and ended up buying tickets to that as well! We decided that we would do the Eye that night and the Dungeon in the morning. The day was already almost over. We may have woken up at like 11am that day!

So, I'm not sure what is wrong with me in that I will walk right onto the London Eye, not even blinking an eye, but I get physically ill on an airplane from my nerves! Whatever! The Eye was amazing. The view was awesome! You really started to get a feeling of just how big London is! The ride took about 30 minutes. We hopped off and then continued on our journey. 

On our quest to find a decent place to eat dinner, we came across a Thai food restaurant on a hidden street just off all the hustle and bustle from the big touristy parts of London! It was sooooo good! I know, I ate Thai food. Don't worry; it had not vegetables or sea food in it, so I was happy!

Morning number two, we checked out of our hotel early, walked over 2 miles with our luggage to our Hilton at Trafalgar Square, asked them to hold our luggage, and then we headed over to see Westminster Abbey and do the Dungeon Tour. Westminster was AMAZING! I'm still mind blown at how many people are buried in there.

That was one massive church!

We headed right on over to the Dungeon tours after Westminster. Oh boy, what a treat...NOT! It was sooooo boring! We thought we were going to be seeing some real dungeons, or get a history lesson on London's bloody history. Instead, we got an expensive spook alley where they kept trying to scare you and you kept wanting to punch someone in the face. Seriously, the first half hour they kept making us, about 30 in the group, move into an empty room, wait for 5 minutes, all cramped inside, then walk to another room, where they would cram us all inside and make us wait again for 5 minutes! Sooooo dumb! Towards the end, it got a tiny bit better, but definitely not worth the money or the time!

Okay, after the Dungeon fiasco, we decided to go see a real place with a bloody history: The Tower of London! It was about 2.5 miles from our location. We started walking and came upon a bike rental. We had talked about hiring a bicycle while we were in London, but watching the other cyclists riding with traffic was enough to give me an ulcer. We knew if we didn't hop on a bike, though, we were not going to be able to do all the things we wanted to. So, we bit the bullet and rented a bike. The trip there wasn't too bad at all. It was a little nerve wracking at times riding up the streets with the traffic and squeezing in between parked and moving vehicles, but for the most part, it wasn't too bad.

We made it to the Tower and because it's still March, the tourist crowds were relatively low, so we didn't have to wait in any lines or deal with insanely large hoards of people! There were definitely people there, but it was bearable!
We started off with a guide, but it got a little boring, so we broke off from the group and made our own way around the Tower. Pretty awesome, for the most part.

After the tower, we hopped on bikes again and began our journey back to the hotel. The trip back was much more terrifying than the journey there. We had to ride through a tunnel with traffic zooming on both sides. I thought for sure I was done for! We got to the hotel and headed out again to find some dinner. We settled on a Brazilian place that kind of sucked! Seriously, the food was not very good. The walk up there was fun, though. Somehow we ended up in Chinatown, which was sooooo cool! I didn't even know London had a China town until we stumbled upon it. After dinner, we made a quick stop in the gigantic M&M shop, still not sure what the appeal of that stupid place is, and then headed back to the hotel. We had to be up incredibly early to catch our plane to....Paris!