Euro Trip Part 2: London

Day 6: Monday April 10, 2017

We left for London on an early Sunday morning. The cab driver picked us up outside the apartment around 4:30 a.m. and drove like a bat out of hell through the empty streets of Madrid. After about 10 minutes of this rollercoaster of a cab ride, I took a break from clinching my eyes shut and gripping my seatbelt for dear life and peaked at the speedometer. I lie to you not, this man was driving 165 km/hr. That’s about 102.5 miles per hour. Twas wild! For those of you who knew my Granny, I was absolutely sitting in that backseat praying just like her the entire ride. LOL!

Thankfully, we arrived at the airport in one piece and checked into our RyanAir flight. I’ll be writing another post later about all of our cost effective transportation throughout Europe, so stay tuned for that!

After a quick two-hour flight, we landed in London around 10:00 a.m., went through customs, and attempted to navigate their ridiculously confusing underground metro system with all of our luggage. We only had two small rolling suitcases and a weekender bag but it was a struggle.

We used public transportation in all of the cities and London’s underground was by far the worst. It was complicated and overcrowded. Although, the double decker buses were pretty great. We enjoyed sitting on the top in the first row of seats to get a full view of the city.

We weren’t able to check into our AirBNB until 2 pm, so in the meantime we thought it would be a good idea to go see a movie. Sameera still hadn’t seen “Get Out,” as it wasn’t playing in Spain and I had already seen it but it was so good that I didn’t mind watching it again. And, bonus points: My school ID worked in London too. Yay for discounts! I failed terribly and fell asleep within the first 10 minutes, but Sameera enjoyed it!

After the movie, we went to the famous “Nando’s” to get something to eat. Both Sameera and I heard that it was terrible but we wanted to see for ourselves. As expected, the food was no bueno. None of these Europeans establishments season their food enough for me.

Once we finished eating, we began our almost two-hour-long journey to our AirBNB. Our host provided directions and her home was right off the bus stop, so it wasn’t terrible.

Sidenote: People were walking around with shorts and flip flops on like it was summertime and Sameera and I had winter coats and boots on. *insert confused face* The weather wasn’t bad, but it was a big adjustment from the warm weather in Madrid. Thankfully, we didn’t get any rain and it was in the mid-60s during the day.

Our AirBNB host was very nice. She even sat down with us and talked about different things to do, sights to see, and ways to get around in London. The room was on the small side with a queen bed and a closet for our clothes, but we didn’t need that much space. We were only going to be there for a day. Once we got settled in, we were absolutely exhausted from our day of traveling so we decided to call it a night and start fresh the next day.

Day 7: Tuesday April 11, 2017

The next day, we woke up early and took the bus to central London. It was so magical to see the London Eye and Westminster Abbey in person. When I was younger, I loved Mary-Kate and Ashley and I felt just like I was in a real-life scene in their movie “Winning London” while walking through the streets.

The first stop on our agenda was to go to Buckingham palace to see the changing of the guards. It supposedly happened at 11 am. I knew the general area that it was in and that it was within walking distance… I just didn’t know exactly how to get there. And to top it all off, of course our internet connections started acting weird at that very moment. But we found it eventually. I pointed us in the right direction and then decided to ask for help when I couldn’t figure it out. Remember, being confident in my wrongness is my thing.

Once we found the palace, we stood in a spot outside the fence along with the hundreds of other people waiting to see the guards change… Until a man walked up and said it only happens every OTHER day and that we would have to wait until tomorrow. Typical Amanee and Sameera failure. But it was really nice to see the palace. It was gorgeous.

Next, we went to find the first stop for our hop on-hop off bus. We only had the one day to squeeze all of our sightseeing in and I definitely recommend the buses for anyone planning a trip to London. There are a lot of different companies. We chose The Original Tour and I have no complaints! It was £29 (which is approximately $37.40 USD) per person for a whole 24 hours and even included a cruise on the Thames River. We saw ALL of the sights. The London Eye, St. Paul's Cathedral, Big Ben, the Marble Arch, Wesminster Abbey, and of course, London Bridge.

We chose to sit and ride for most of the time and take pictures from the bus as we only had a limited time to get all of the sites in. We got off at the Tower of London and sat on the steps and had a snack of “chips in newspaper” (French fries in a cup with newspaper wrapped around it) and tea/hot chocolate.

Once again, those Europeans don’t season their food and the ketchup tasted like actual tomatoes… Weird.

Next we boarded the river cruise where we sat outside again to get a good view to take pictures. It was really cool to see all of the sites from the water. Our tour guide had a really great sense of humor and we learned a lot about the history of London.

After the cruise, we hopped right back on the bus and headed towards Notting Hill. My mother absolutely insisted that we go to this part of London before we left. The film, “Notting Hill,” staring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts is one of our favorite movies to watch over and over again.

We marched all over the streets to find the house from the movie… Just to take a picture. We stopped at a restaurant to have fish and chips because we absolutely could not have left London without eating that. I had fried cod fish with steak fries. It was pretty good… Not seasoned enough, as expected and ABSOLUTELY nowhere near as delicious as the fried fish from the Bahamas that I rave about all of the time… But good.

Once we finished eating, we walked a little further and finally found the house with the blue door and explored the streets of Notting Hill a little further. It was a really cute neighborhood. I wish we had time to rent bikes and ride around. Next time!

After our long day of exploring, we took the bus back to our AirBNB and stopped at a pizza place down the street because as I’ve said, I have to eat pizza everywhere I go. When we left, they accidentally gave us the wrong pizza and the guy literally chased us down the street to give us the right one… Such a nice guy.

We got back to the house and Sameera had a TIME trying to use this lady’s tiny blow dryer on her thick hair. The wattage on her American blow dryer was too high and blew the circuit in her apartment in Spain… Didn’t want to do that again. (LOL) While she did her hair, I packed our suitcases as we were leaving for Paris early the next morning.

The first part of our London experience was pretty cool although it wasn’t much different from the US. Next up is Paris and then London part two! Stay tuned!

-A.