London: Day 4

Today was our last day in London. We can't believe we're done with our first city already. We spent the day traveling, mostly. We started out bright and early and took a train from Victoria Station to Lingfield, which is where the temple is. It's about an hour and a half away from the city. It seemed like a pretty small little town and we had a little trouble finding a cab. After calling 3 different services, someone finally agreed to come pick us up, and we did a session. It was a beautiful temple and they actually have lodging for visitors right next to it.

We didn't take our cameras with us, so that's just a picture from Greg's phone. After the temple, we did some quick shopping at Zara, H&M, Topshop, etc. Unfortunately, I don't have tons of room in my bag and I was really only looking for a dress, and they were all too short, so I didn't come out with anything. So we went back to the hotel and watched the World Cup game. It was pretty crazy seeing all the people here decked out in their England shirts. The pubs were all full and we could here people yelling outside when they scored a goal. There will probably be a lot of drunk people here tonight. Oh well...on to Edinburgh!

London: Day 3

It's been another great day for us. After breakfast, we went to Hyde Park and walked around for a bit. We found the Serpentine Lake (pond? I don't know) and took pictures of all the birds.

After walking around a bit more, we went to Buckingham Palace. There wasn't really much to do there because we couldn't actually go inside. We did find out, however, that the queen had come in about 30 minutes before we got there. Bummer.

As you can see, Greg's beard is coming along slowly. He says it's itchy though, so it might not last too long.

After Buckingham Palace, we went to lunch at Cafe Rouge, a little French restaurant, where Greg ate gruyere cheese and didn't even throw up.  Then we headed over to the National Gallery where we saw paintings by Seurat, van Gogh, Monet, and Degas. The ballerinas by Degas were my favorite. Greg liked a winter landscape by Monet.

Next, we decided to go check out Covent Garden, which we actually thought was a garden. It's not. It's more like a little shopping center with a bunch of lame street performers. But we did enjoy some hot chocolate and had pizza for dinner.

The best part of the day, though, was after dinner when we went to Swan Lake at Royal Albert Hall. We were on the very last row in the very top balcony. But it was still incredible.

London: Days 1 & 2

Well, we made it! We flew out June 7 at about 10:15 AM and after a brief stop in New York, we flew into London, landing at around 7:30 AM. Unfortunately, neither one of us had very much luck sleeping on the plane, (we watched Sherlock Holmes instead), so we were both exhausted by the time we got in. We went to our hotel, but couldn't check in, so we dropped off our heavy bags and went to find something to do. Of course, while dropping off our bags, we also dropped off our cameras (oops).

Anyway, we decided to take the tube over to Westminster Abby, which was beautiful. We toured around inside and walked around outside for a while. Basically, until I didn't think I could stand up anymore. Luckily, at that point it was after 1:00, so we headed back to the hotel to check in and get some much needed sleep.

We woke up around 5:30 and went out (this time with our cameras) to find some dinner.

We went to a pub in Leicester Square (which kind of looked like the Times Square of London) and ordered some fish and chips. I'm not actually a huge fan of fish, but this was pretty good. And huge. After dinner, we wandered around outside for a while and found the Somerset House. From there we saw the London Eye and decided that sunset would be a cool time to get a good look at the city.

After walking around a bit more, we went back to the hotel to sleep. Our room looks like this:

So we have a shower and a sink, but no toilet. The toilet is down two floors. Oh well, it could be worse.

Today, we started out late after catching up on some sleep, and had breakfast at a cafe down the street where we heard the sweetest british grandpa reading Thomas the Tank Engine to his grand daughter. It was adorable. After that, we took the tube to try and find the Tate Modern Museum. Instead, St. Paul's Cathedral caught our attention, so we stopped there. We ended up climbing around 500 steps to get an awesome view of the city.

Anyway, after the Cathedral, we bought sandwiches at a little store and ate them on the steps. Greg even fed some birds. (Isn't that where the "feed the birds" lady sits in Mary Poppins?) Next, we found the Tate Modern and walked across the Milennium Bridge to get there. I'm pretty sure that's the bridge that was destroyed by the death eaters in the last Harry Potter. The museum was great (and free) and we saw a bunch of Picasso, Andy Warhol, and "The Kiss" by Rodin.

That was most of our day today. We only have two days left here before we move on to Edinburgh!