Sisters in London

I just got back from a wonderful trip over in England.

You can't help but be excited when your Delta App shows this reminder the day before you leave...

On August 2nd, Aimee and I flew out to London.  It was a non-stop, ten hour flight, so we wore our pajamas.  The flight left Salt Lake around 8:30pm.

We purposely chose to both sit by the window instead of by each other so we could sleep better having the side to lean against.  However, even though I was exhausted, I only slept about four-five hours on the flight.

 We arrived in London around 1:30 in the afternoon (which was only 6:30am Utah time).  We were tired, but chose to keep ourselves up to adjust to the new time.  I felt we did pretty good and didn't feel much jet lag on the trip.  

We got to our hotel and cleaned up, then went out into the busy city of London.  The weather was so pleasant and a nice break from hot, dry Utah.

 I couldn't go to London without getting a picture with the iconic telephone booth.

 There were pigeons everywhere.

And even squirrels in the big city.

 We decided to go to the Victoria and Albert Museum.  It was free and closing soon, so we used Rick Steve's guide to go through quickly.

One of DaVinci's notebooks with cool sketches.

We found a room with replicas of Michelangelo's work.

 We even saw a replica of David.  I didn't realize how tall the statue was!  We tried to take an edited picture, and were just laughing at how funny it probably looked to those watching, and how funny the picture turned out.

 It was nice to visit the museum.

We were thirsty and decided to buy some water bottles, since drinking fountains are non-existent in Europe.  I bought us water bottles...three times. I would try a self checkout stand, but then it would have issues and I'd move down to another one. Third time's a charm! Each time it wouldn't work, it would call for assistance, so at one point we had three checkout computers calling for assistance and had to embarrassingly tell the guy that they just needed to be cancelled because we kept moving to a new one.

We were hungry and looked at Trip Adviser for ideas for dinner.  We found an Italian place with high reviews and headed there.  All the meat hanging in the window and in the display counter should've given us a clue that this was no Olive Garden.

 The menu was quite interesting, and we had to have the waitress explain what exactly everything was.  The Offals (or organs) did not sound very appetizing.

I thought about trying whole pigeon or grilled rabbit, but decided I'd go with something a little safer.

We settled on a yummy caprese salad with cured meat for the appetizer. 

 And some beef ravioli (everything had beef in it, but it was really good flavor).

 It was definitely and experience, and our most expensive meal of the trip.

We had pre-bought tickets for the London Eye and decided to take advantage that evening.

 It was such an beautiful night and a great way to see London.

 As darkness approached, we headed back to our hotel.  

We were VERY tired and thought the Underground would be faster than the 15 minute walk.  We ended up getting lost in the Underground, going up and down several stairs and taking just as long as if we'd just walked back and wearing ourselves out.  We couldn't help but laugh at the irony. 

When we got to our room, we couldn't have been more excited to fall asleep.  It was about 10:30pm when I finally went to bed, but it had been a good day.

The next day, Friday, Aimee woke up at 6:30 am and I slept til 8. We had breakfast in the hotel restaurant and then headed out for our one full day in London. 

We started with a Westminster Walk narrated by Rick Steves. (his European travel app is awesome.) It was fun to see Westminster Abbey, 

Big Ben and Parliament,

 the Prime Minister's home, the horse guards parade, the Ministry of Defense, 

and interesting architecture and monuments.

We ended our tour at Trafalgar Square where we enjoyed watching some street performers. 

Aimee and I watched these street performers dance and were on the 'front row' where they gave us high five and had the audience clap along.  We felt like we should tip them, but only had big bills.  So I went into the museum to get change.  Well by the time I went through security (security is really tight there, as you can imagine), found the gift shop, got the change and came back out, the performance was over.  We ended up not ever tipping them.  Oh well.

After Trafalgar Square we made our way to Borough Market for lunch. 

We shared a mushroom pie, I got a cold lemonade (it was a pretty nice day and walking around made me hot and thirsty) and then we got some fresh cherries from the market.

Then we hopped on a double decker bus just to see where it would take us (it was included with our Oyster card). 

Afterward we went to Buckingham Palace and then had a nice stroll through St James's Park.

 We were tired and had some down time at the hotel. 

 We took the Underground or walked everywhere, but it never took too long to get places.

 That night we took a cruise down the Thames River.  

 We had a great tour of London from the Thames.  We started at the Parliament building,

 headed past the Eye,

 We saw St. Paul's Cathedral... "feed the birds, tuppance the bag"...

 We approached Tower Bridge

 The Tower bridge was an iconic sight.

 It was neat to see the modern mixed with the old architecture.

After the river cruise we had a short time until our play that we were going to that night.  As we followed Siri's directions on Aimee's phone we kept our eyes out for a place to grab dinner.  We saw Neds Noodle Box and settled on that.  It was good, but a little messy to eat while walking. 

 The GPS was starting to get confusing and we were worried about the time, so we called an Uber.  It took us to the theater just in time.  We finished our noodles and found our seats for "The Play that Goes Wrong". 

 It was a hilarious play and a fun way to end the day.

 It had been a long, exhausting day and we were excited once again to call it a night.

Saturday, August 5th we packed up, ate breakfast in the hotel again and headed to the train station.

It was tricky taking all our luggage on the Underground.

We couldn't leave London without stopping at Kings Cross Station and seeing Platform 9 3/4.  Luckily, it was on our way.

However, the line was too long, so we looked from a distance.

 I tried to create my own scene from Harry Potter.

 We made our train and took the 2 1/2 hour train ride to Manchester.  We enjoyed watching the series "Suits" on Aimee's iPad to kill the time.

 We had a wonderful time in London.  Little did I know, there was a surprise waiting for me in Manchester...