There and back again

DH and I just popped down to London for a quick weekend trip. It's really great to be able to do that kind of thing! Anyway, we had a great time, saw about 60% of the stuff we had planned on seeing, and met up with a friend of mine I hadn't seen in almost 5 years!

As with my Germany trip, I won't bore you with details, but here's a quick recap of our trip.

Friday, Jan 16

Took the train from Harrogate to London Kings Cross, checked into the hotel, walked about seeing Parliament and Big Ben, Westminster, St. James Park, Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, and Trafalgar Square. Met up with Lucy for drinks and dinner, and missed the last Underground train back to our hotel, so we had to grab a taxi to get home (we had enjoyed quite a bit of wine by that point).

Saturday, Jan 17

Took a LONG time getting started this morning ;). In any case, once we did get going, we took a walk along the south bank of the Thames, seeing Parliament and Big Ben (again!), the London Eye (broken, unfortunately, as the weather was perfect for pics from the Eye), the Millennium Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral (didn't go inside as the best part - the whispering gallery - was closed for renovations), and Fleet Street. We closed out the day by visiting the National Gallery. I was pretty excited to see a bunch of Renaissance paintings, but found out that about 1/2 the paintings I wanted to see had been included in a special exhibition - so they weren't with the permanent collections at that time. Poopers! Oh well, we'll catch them next time. We were cautioned against leaving the Gallery by staff for a short time while a HUGE pro-Gaza, anti-Israeli incursion protest was taking place in Trafalgar Square (right in front of the Gallery). It was pretty wild with helicopters flying overhead and lots of shouting and chanting. When we finally got out, we walked back down towards Westminster, where yet another huge protest was taking place across from Downing Street - this one against the Sri Lankan government in the wake of a murder of a prominent journalist. More excitement. We took it really easy that night by eating dinner near the hotel in preparation for a big Sunday.

Sunday, Jan 18

Up bright and early! Had a hideously huge breakfast at a greasy spoon cafe near Victoria station (which I ate just half of), then made our way up to Covent Garden and through Soho before visiting the British Museum. Spent a few hours checking out the Rosetta Stone!, the Egyptian and near-east collections, and the Ancient Greek and Roman collections. After that we made our way to the Tower of London. We had wanted to take one of the Yeoman's tours and then spend another hour or so exploring the Tower. Unfortunately, the last tour had left an hour before we got there, and the Tower was closing an hour later. There was no way I was going to spend 16.50 pounds for just an hour in the Tower, so we left it until our next visit. Instead, we made our way over to the Tower Bridge, visited the upper deck (with clear skies and a beautiful sunset, it was great). Afterwards, we somehow made it back up to Covent Garden to a neat fish and chips place we'd seen earlier in the day, then raced back to Tower Hill for our Jack the Ripper night walk. Despite being 10 minutes late, we made it (miracle of miracles) and walked around the East End of London hearing about those lovely gruesome murders. Very cool.

The final bit of our day was supposed to have been a trip to The Sports Cafe to watch the Eagles/Cardinals game, but DH checked the score before we got on the Undergrounf, and it was 21-6. He was too discouraged to go out to watch the game, so we just went back to the hotel to ease our aching feet. It turns out the game was on a Sky Sports channel we got in our hotel room, so DH watched the painful second half from the comfort of our hotel bed.

Monday, Jan 19th

Final Day! Quick coffee and pastry from a neighborhood cafe was our breakfast, which we ate in a park overlooking the Thames. Then up to Westminster Abbey for the visit we were supposed to have done on Saturday morning. We spent about 2 hours touring the Abbey (which was awesome!), and by the time we were done it was time to collect our things from the hotel and make our way up to the train station for our train ride home. We'd enjoyed unbelievably good weather the entire weekend, and the instant our train pulled out of Kings Cross, it started pouring rain. C'est la vie.

Pics of our trip can be seen here.

Next month's trip: A long weekend in Paris!