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Arrival in England and first day in London

I took a flight out of Philadelphia on the night of Saturday the 14th and arrived at Heathrow on Sunday morning. I tried to sleep on the plane, but a crying baby for most of the flight made that tricky. In spite of that, the flight was quite pleasant, I’ll certainly go with British Airways again when I have the opportunity. Sunday and Monday were spent settling in, and I snagged my first delicious, traditional taste of England – some fish ‘n chips!

First impressions of the country? All the cars are tiny and the combination of driving on the opposite side of the road and all the roundabouts made the idea of driving there a bit daunting. Luckily I didn’t have to, there are sidewalks (er, pavements!) everywhere, trips to the grocery store and getting take-out were all simple quarter mile (or less) walks. Once in the city, navigating the London Underground is pretty easy after I got over my generic fear of public transportation (hah!) and the regional rail services were pretty easy and frequent too, buses remain a mystery but walking everywhere there wasn’t a tube solved that. Also, it was warm and sunny. In spite of all the dreary England tales I heard, most days of my trip were of the warm and sunny sort, the first week was almost entirely sunny (except for the window of time that day we went up in the London Eye, of course!)

Tuesday was a whole day down in London! Took the train from where I was staying north of London, and from there walked and took the tube all over the place. We walked around Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road. From there we headed over to the British Museum. It was a really fantastic museum, I really enjoyed wandering around. Plus toward the end of our museum adventure I learned that the Rosetta Stone was housed there, so popped around for a look.

From there we ventured over to see the Big Ben tower! It was high on my list of things to see in London, so important to see early on. Right near there is also Westminster Abbey, which was beautiful in both the day and night!

From there we walked over to Buckingham Palace!

Big Ben is also quite a nice sight at night (London Eye in the background).

My feet hurt from walking at this point, I’m such a wimp! So it was time to wander to the tube station. We ended up at King’s Cross, which I’ve mentioned in the past I’ve heard of “Because that’s how you get to Hogwarts”. Indeed! They even have a Platform 9 3/4! Squee!

Then finally the trek back to the house. A really great day, so much to see!

2 Comments

  • RoboNuggie

    Glad you enjoyed yourself Pleia… if you ever feel the urge to visit these shores again, consider having a look around Stratford Upon Avon (not far from London), and the home of William Shakespeare… I think you would like it.

    Oh, that picture of you in front of Buckingham Palace, take a look at that black car just to the right of you… it looks important, I wonder who it was?

  • HELNI

    In December 2012, I had a chance to visit London. Luckily, my friend took me to Home of Shakespeare. Very awesome to see his old house.