Sorry about the title, I couldn’t resist the joke.
After months of good luck, watching our wallets and our pockets, it finally happened: my phone was stolen. Or lost? Actually we aren’t really clear on the details. You see, when we had exited the Eurostar train neither David nor myself checked the seat pockets thinking that all of our belongings were already in our bags. Ten minutes later we realized that our phone wasn’t with us. We couldn’t get back onto the train since we had already gone through customs, apparently that’s a thing, but the Eurostar lost and found sent someone more “qualified” onto the train to check our seats.
If you haven’t already assumed, my phone was not found. Luckily the only thing that was on it were the apps and contact information, which hopefully are synced properly with my gmail account. The only real downside, aside from the $150 deductible I now have to pay, was that we had lost our main camera for the London portion of our trip. So, unfortunately, no photos in this post.
Surprisingly the lost phone wasn’t the hardest part of our trip, the tube strike was. For 48 of the 72 hours of our trip in London the tubes were operating at about 30%. That basically meant that some of the lines weren’t operating and some of the stations were locked. This wouldn’t have been nearly as bad if the website the government had showed which stations weren’t operating and if any of the people they had hired to direct people had actually known how to work around the tube strike. The government also tried to take some pressure off of getting around London by tripling the amount of buses on the road which, of course, led to the worst traffic I had ever seen in my life. It was literally faster to walk four miles than to take buses in bumper to bumper traffic that would randomly decide to stop operating
But with those speed bumps out of the way London was FANTASTIC! As soon as we figured our way to our hostel with our brand new Oyster cards (that’s what they call the tube passes there) we headed down the street in search of a replacement camera. Luckily everything was in English and their pharmacy’s also carried disposable cameras, almost like being home! We got two for the price of one and were officially ready to start touring London.
Our first stop was the Tate Modern Art Museum. We walked around the South Bank area and looked at all the bridges along the way. The good thing about the museum was that it was free (like all of their government run museums) the bad thing was that we didn’t have much time to spend inside. It was interesting but I don’t think David and I enjoy art museums enough to really have liked it. Walking along the Thames river was fun though and we got to see a great view of the London Eye and Big Ben! We took a red double decker bus to Baker street (which was two block from our hostel by the way) and got to drive through all of the main sites of London!! You can basically make your own tour, minus the information, by riding at the top of the double deckers and it was honestly my favorite way to see the city.
At Baker street we stopped by the famous Sherlock Holmes Museum and the door front for 221B. The museum was closed because it was already past 6 but we were able to peak inside and grab some pictures out front. We then headed back to our hostel and bought some groceries at Tesco before heading back to our hostel for some dinner and relaxation.
Day two dawned gray and gloomy, real London weather, as we made our way to central London for a free walking tour with NewEurope, seriously the best walking tours around Europe! Our tour started in Covent Garden which used to be an orchard for a monastery before King Henry VIII decided he didn’t like all the wealth the papal powers had in England and took them all for himself. Now it is a bustling shopping location with high end shops like Dior and around the back there are stalls that sell some cool stuff. Our tour lasted almost four hours and took us to all the important places in London. Trafalger Square, St. James’s and Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and more. Our tour guide Sonja was amazing! She studying comparative literature for the past 11 years so she was basically a professional storyteller. She made the city come alive so much that we ended up buying tickets for two more tours the next day!
After the tour we walked to a pub to grad fish and chips with two girls from our group. They were from Estonia and we had a fun time talking about our respective home countries and their major differences. The food was better than I remembered from a few years back when my family stopped over in Heathrow and the beer was some of the best I’ve ever had! After lunch, which was really more like dinner since it was almost 6 o’clock, David and I headed across the closest bridge to see a beautiful view of the Houses of Parliaments. David and I both agree that this was the best view of our trip and we both are fervently hoping that our pictures end up coming out all right! We even tried to take a selfie with the view so we’ll see.
We walked towards the London Eye but decided not to buy tickets, mostly because doing anything in London is ridiculously expensive, but also because David is afraid of heights and we thought it better not to test it with a suspended glass Ferris wheel. We had to head back to the hostel early because the tub strike made it impossible to get back after 9 pm, when all of the trains stopped running and the streets became even more impacted with cars and buses.
On our third day David and I decided to take a trip to The Museum of London which is the world’s largest urban museum spanning more than 2000 years of London’s history! We’re both huge history museum nerds and having everything be in English for a change was a bonus. They have a ton of artifacts from pre-historic times on and some replicated clothing, homes, shops and even a mini-Victorian period town! After the museum we walked to Leadenhall Market which was used in the Harry Potter films for Diagon Alley and it really feels like it could have been magical shops there. We sat down at one of the outside tables and had some lunch before making our way back to Covent garden for the start of our second London tour.
Our second tour was an Old City tour so we got to see the square mile that is actually the city of London. The surrounding boroughs make up greater London but the city is where the Romans first started Londonium over 2000 years ago. Our tour guide, Chris, was a history major from Australia and was the perfect person to lead our historical walking tour! We got to see a lot of sights that we would have missed like the beautiful House of Justice, which is stylized as a neo-gothic palace, and learned about London’s entire history in just 3 hours.
By the time the tour ended David and I were exhausted from our day of walking but we had to push through because our third London tour was starting in only 20 minutes. The third tour met about 50 feet from the Tower of London (coincidentally where our second tour ended) and it was the “Grim Reaper Tour” showing us London’s dark underbelly. Sonja was our tour guide again and I am not being hyperbolic, she is the best NewEurope Sandman guide I have ever had. Her enthusiasm for the ghost stories made her the perfect guide as she told us about the haunted Tower of London and Liverpool station, the torture that happened in the dungeons, how the royal beheadings went down and the infamous Jack the Ripper story as we weaved our way through London’s East End, the location of his(or her?) actual murders. By the time the tour had ended the tubes had essentially stopped running so David and I spent an hour and a half navigating the buses back to the hostel while discussing who the real Jack the Ripper must have been. (By the way this tour is 10 pounds and a must do, but only if Sonja is your guide!)
Our fourth and final day in London brought us to Camden Market, really a must see! There are actually two of them, Camden and Camden Lock, within a few blocks of each other and the day we were there was a global food fair. The stalls were all out and about despite the rainy London weather and the streets were lined with shops with everything from souvenirs to homemade oddities. Our train was scheduled to depart at 5 pm local time so we could only stay a couple of hours wandering around the market but it was a place I definitely hope to visit again…with a lot more money.
We arrived at King’s Corss station at around 1:30, which was good because we had about a thirty minute wait to get our photos taken at Platform 9&3/4. I am not ashamed to admit I was the most excited person there. It is really just a sign and a trolley cut in half and inserted into the wall for tourists but honestly, for Potterheads at least, the platform signifies the portal between the muggle and magical world, and yes I was a bit bummed when I didn’t go through the wall. David and I got some separates on our disposable camera posing with the trolley while we waited for the professional photographer to come back, at 10 pounds a pop this place makes a nice business out of tourists! David and I took our photos together, wearing scarves and everything, and it really is my favorite souvenir from the entire Europe trip!
After our photo op it was time to leave London behind and make our way back to France. We have only a week and a half left in the city of love but we left all of the best touristy things for last.
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