Procrastinating London

I have been way to lazy and trying to catch up on some much needed sleep. So, here I am one week later finally posting my blog on London! Now, I think the day by day works best. We did a LOT in London, but were tired of pictures after paris. So, I will just post a few pictures like the last one. Then in a day or so you will finally get to see ALL of the pics from Paris and London! We had a blast, but as you could imagine 20days of visitors and traveling can be a lot. We were happy they came, but relieved they got to go home. hehe I am a bit sad they left, but we will be seeing Rachael and Laura in 2 months! Sooo on with it...Brace yourselves...


Thurday October 16th(Day 1):
I don't really have any pictures for this day. We left Amsterdam around 11am. Once we arrived in Brussels we were suppose to have a 1hr layover and transfer trains pretty quickly. Sadly there had been a fire in the tunnel last month and trains were delayed. We had to change and get on another train for 1hr later then planned. Normally this would be ok but we had planned a concert for the night we arrived. Leaving us just enough time to make the show! We arrived in London around 7pm a little disappointed. Oh I forgot to mention we were also staying with a friend of a friend(Tamsin and Annika's friend) in London, Richmond. Red, Richmonds brother, met us at the train station and walked us to their apartment. It wasn't too far of a walk, but with all the luggage the girls were exhausted. Then we were determined to make the Of Montreal concert, since it was paid for, and tried our luck. We got to the concert venu, Koko's, and arrived just as the band started!!! What luck! The show was great and I would certainlly see them live again. Afterwards we had a quick bite of YUMMY greasy food and headed home. Pheww what a day!

Day 2
This is me on the bridge near Big ben

This day was planned to be jam packed! We saw:
*Big Ben
*Change of Guards at Buckingham Palace!(not such a great palace after some of the stuff we have seen! The Louve puts it to shame! It was still cool to see. I liked the fountain.)

*The Queens Gallery @ Buckingham (Here they hold Jewls of the queen on display and a nice little painting gallery. I loved the audio tour. Very interesting.
We had a lovely lunch at a small cafe across from the palace mews, recomended by a guard at the gallery. We had planned on going to the mews, but it was closed by the time we got to it!
*Then we were off to Avenue Q!(This is a live broadway show that is also done in London. They use puppets on stage and it is VERY funny. I am super happy we went to see it live!)
*After the show was dinner at Gordon Ramsey's Resturaunt Foxtrot! (Its located in Chelsea, where Nils and Myriam used to live. Its just south of the center of london, but not far out. Laura is a big fan of Gordon R. and we made it a small surprise for her. The dinner was very fairly priced at about 15p per person. Yummy and great food!)

Day 3
We started with the Tower Bridge of London. Then walked our way to everything else as follows:

These are photos from inside the Tower exhibition. Silly fun!

*Tower Bridge(We toured inside and did the exhibition. Fairly interesting. If you look at the photos from the outside later in this you can see where we walked HIGH in the air over the bridge. It's the walkway just over where the bridge opens)


We got to watch the Bridge open from on top of the Tower of London
*First we had lunch at a place called Waggamma recomended by Nils and Myriam. Also a fantastic 2for1 deal from our London Pass surey motivated our lunch purchace! YUMMY!!! I would eat there all the time if I lived in London!
*Tower of London (this is an old castle the we walked through. It took a lot of time, but well worth it! I think it was really fun, but it certainlly wore us out!
*London Eye...Ok ok We failed and were too poor to actually go on it. However, we saw it from far away! Hehe could you blame us. It wasn't included with our London Pass and we were short on cash!
*From here we crossed the london bridge by walking...
*Tate modern art(this was open late and after all the other contemporary art we wanted to see the modern stuff. I was super entertained by a lot of it, but not necessarly impressed. I think the gals felt about the same! Great Art Museum though. A must see)
*We crossed the Milennium Bridge just outside of Tate. and saw...
*St. Pauls Cathedral(okok another cheater move. I think we learned this from our Irish tour guide in Dublin. We only saw the outside! hehe It was getting late and Laura REALLY had to pee. Which led us to take a bus and get off at the first McDonalds sign we saw. Hehe That led us to a train station that was fairly large and had dinner at a pub. I was way grouchy and stressed about my last 15pounds in my pocket that I had to strech over 2 more days! Eeek)

Day 4
*Camden Market(As recomended by Tamsin. This market is HUGE. I think there was a lot of repetative stuff there, but once you get to the main part it's pretty cool. There are food vendors and some cooler shops. We had a yummy lunch...

I hadn't had a decent burrito in a while. So I was VERY happy about that! I think becky liked her's too hehe)
*Shakespears Globe Theater

(I liked the tour mostly because it was free and gave a nice insight on how plays were done. A lot of it I already knew from all the theater classes I have taken, but it was really nice to see a replica in person.)
*Picadilli (This was not at all what's expected. Basically its a big area with famous shops and a sort of pinwheel effect of streets branching off of each other. Cool to see, but not that impressive or what it's hyped up to be. We went in a shop that is famous for gift baskets. hehe very tempting chocolates and candies awaited us there. We had to drag ourselves outta that shop fast!!!)
*We saw a movie I think this night- Burn after reading was the movie SOOO FUNNY!
*Dinner was found at another recomended place called Stock Pot. It was just typical diner food. I think Laura, Becky, and Rachael weren't too impressed with their fish and chips. I wasn't very fond myself, but the SOUP was WELL worth it!!!

Day 5-Our last day in London
*Harrods (There wasn't time for much on our last day. So, we took the chance to see the famous department store Harrods. It is HUGE and very impressive. Nils tells me that back in the day they would import ANYTHING including baby elephants! CRAZY Myth or not. After seeing the place I can believe it. Harrods was massive, but we mostly visited the toy shop. Can you believe they have toy jeeps for kids that are like the real thing but small for 18,000 pounds?! SHEESH!!! Becky had Lunch with a friend inside. Rachael, Laura and I had Lunch with our lovely host, Richmond. He was soo very hospitable to us the entire time. They even bought us muffins to eat in the mornings! Great breakfast! We are all VERY greatful that these boys put us up for the five days we were in London. I really enjoyed their company as well. Great guys!


*The very last thing was our LOVELY travel home. Remember the train problem on the way there?! You guessed it, the same problem on the way back. We expected it and made our train just fine. Only problem was that they had to delay the train in Brussels for all those heading to Amsterdam. It was the last train of the night so they had to wait for us. Only problem was that this train stopped EXTRA long at other stops to compensate! So in the end we were more then 1hr 30min behind planned schedule. Instead of arriving just after 11 as planned we arrived close to 1am! You may think that sucks because its so late, but we were a little worried. If you miss your last train out of Schipohol or Amsterdam then you have to wait tell the 1st train of the morning at about 5am! Rachael, Laura, and Becky made theirs with a little time to spare from Schipohol. I continued to Amsterdam Central and missed my last train by MINUTES!!! I was very frustrated when I found out I would have to wait tell 5:50am to go home! For the 1st hour I wouldnt give up and searched for some late bus or any last resort. A cab would have cost me WAY to much. Eventually I gave in. Ams Centeral is covered, but basically outdoors. Its COLD in there! Lucky for me I had my suitcase full of clothes to bundle up in. I put on 2 extra sweaters, toe socks, and my jacket while I bundled up to a movie on my ipod. I got home ten to 7am with about 40 minuted before I had to work. I had a second wind of energy and bucked up for a long day of work! After work I traveled to Hoofddorp to say bye to the gals and drop off my small suitcase that they so graciously hauled home!!! VERY NICE! By the time I finally hit my bed it was 1am! More then 48hrs without sleep killed me! It had taken me tell almost yesterday to finally catch up to my normal self! Thus, my great excuse for prolonging doing this very detailed blog! I hope it was well worth the wait! More pictures to come! ENJoY!!!
-Tess