London - Day 1

Wednesday, April 11

We were more than thrilled to get into London.  Since we stayed in Reading, at my sister's apartment, we took the National Rail train into London. Depending the train, on average the ride is about 45 minutes; so very similar to my coworkers commutes from the suburbs to downtown Chicago. The cheapest roundtrip tickets were to travel at "off-peak" times.  A r/t, off peak travel card (so we weren't assigned to any certain departure times), cost 21.70 GBP (or ~$32 USD). One benefit of the travel card is that not only did it work to get us to/from London; but it also gave us unlimited rides on London's tube (trains) AND bus system.  Thus, the cost didn't seem all that bad to include our travel while in London.

The train from Reading gets off at Paddington Station in London.  From there, we got on the Bakerloo line towards Elephant and Castle (just like one of the pubs we like here in Chicago) to get off at Waterloo for London Eye.

This was our first view of London. The London Eye.

 



 Gorgeous? Yes.

By the time we'd arrive here, it was about 11:30am on a Wednesday morning.  I went inside to buy tickets and waited about 20 minutes.  When I got up to the counter, it was a little bit before noon and I was told the next boarding time for tickets at 1:30pm.  I bought two.

I want to note that  you can pre-buy London Eye tickets online (here and get a small discount); but we intentionally waited to buy in person.  National Rail has a coupon booklet that offers buy one, get one free tickets for several of London's sites, simply by showing your travel ticket for that day.  Thus, even though it cost us some extra time, we saved ~$25 USD by using our coupon (we bought standard tickets).

Since we had time to kill, we figured what better way to start a day in London than hitting up a pub for some lunch.  We walked along the Thames River, which was jam packed with tourists like us.  We stopped for some pictures as well:

 



Big Ben and Parliament



My Big Ben trying to be dirty/funny





(My rule of thumb in asking someone else to take a picture of us is that if
they have a DSLR camera too; then they must be trustworthy to use ours...)

Right before the bridge to cross over to Parliament, we found a pub called County Hall Arms.  It had a few tables outside full of patrons; so we stopped in for lunch and a beer.  One common thing in pubs is that you typically order food and drink from the bar tender.  I opted for the sandwich and Ben had his first fish and chips (wish were disappointing).
 

 

After a few beverages, we were back in line to board the London Eye. Here's a few shots from line and the view:

Big Ben and Parliament

 



 

Inside our "Pod"



Despite it being quite the tourist attraction, I was glad we decided to go on it.  It turns about 30 minutes to do a full rotation (and you only do one). From there, we walked along the Thames and started to follow Rick Steve's Westminster Walk (there's a podcast and it's also in his Pocket London book).

Looking east at Parliament

We opted not to pay to go in Westminster.  This is something I regret.

 

 

Classic London; all in one?

 

Downing Street; where the Prime Minister lives

Trafalgar Square
(Thank goodness the 1990's Rick Steves movie lied; there were no pigeon food vendors)

Olympic Countdown

Another Trafalgar Square shot

One of the great things about London is that the majority of the museums are FREE. The National Gallery is right at Trafalgar Square; so we stopped in and followed a portion of Rick Steve's tour in our book. We hit some of the highlights; pieces by Michangelo and Da Vinci, but because art isn't really our thing; we spent about an hour or so here.

Statue of Abe Lincoln; this statue was
placed to mimmick the original here in Chicago
at Lincoln Park



 

We grabbed a pint at a bar near Trafalgar,  The Lord of the Moon (it was okay; almost like a large family style restaurant mixed with a pub). and then headed back towards Westminster.  We had pre-purchased Premier League soccer (football) tickets.  Originally we were going to see Chelsea vs. New Castle, but we waited for tickets to become available.  It turned out that because of that FA Cup going on at the same time, the game we'd wanted to see was moved.  We debated on getting FA Cup Semi-final tickets but those would have been approximately $300 each ticket.  Don't get me wrong, I love my husband, but I do not love soccer enough to spend $600 for it. 

 

Thus, we ended up getting tickets for lesser known teams, QPR (Queens Park Rangers) vs Swansea at QPR's Stadium.  To get there we utilized our unlimited railcards and navigated a bus from Westminster to Shepherd's Bush.  All of the bus routes are posted at the stops, which makes it very easy to navigate.  On the bus we rode through Kensington, Hyde park and Notting Hill. Such a better view than sitting underground on the tube!

 

We found a nearby bar for dinner; which apparently was the pre-party spot for QPR fans. 

Pre-game/dinner bar



From there we walked to Loftus Road Stadium.  For about $60 total, we had some great 3rd row corner spot seats. 

 

 

 



The game itself was really fun (the only weird part is that no booze is allowed in the seats but you can drink behind them where the concessions are).  The adjacent (net-line) section was for Swansea visitors; so there was a lot of interesting banter back and forth.  In the end, QPR won.  I'm really glad that we were able to go to a Premier League game.  Even if it wasn't the best know teams, it was a great experience.

 

After the game, we took to Paddington and then the train back to Reading for the end of Day #1 in London.



England - Day 1

Back to posting about our Europe trip in the Spring...

As you may recall, we were in Barcelona over Easter (where we met my sister, Mr. Sister) for a long weekend.  From there, it was off to England:

We left Barcelona on Tuesday, 4/10. Our flight departed at noon, so we had a somewhat leisurely morning to sleep in a bit, get Starbucks and hop on the Aerobus to get back to BCN airport.  Both my sister and I were looking forward to the airport because shopping had been lousy in Barcelona.  Due to Good Friday, Easter Sunday and general store closures on Monday, we never really had a good opportunity to shop.

Well, we got screwed. We were flying British Airways to Heathrow and were assigned to sad Gate G. Why sad? Because there were NO stores or shops besides McDonalds, vending machines and two convenient stores with alcohol, makeup and magazines (and btw, American style gossip magazines are ridiculously overpriced there; equal to about $8 USD). You might there that doesn't sound so bad; but we were starving and wanted to shop.  Looking over the balcony (where all of the over gates were), revealed a mini-mall.  Complete with Desigual and Starbucks.  Trust me, you would be disappointed in Gate G too.  I had few options so I gave in and ate a McDonald's cheeseburger, for the first time in years.  To be more accurate, probably in a decade. BUT, I will amidst that I was so hungry, it tasted damn good.

Thus, the moral of the story is, if you find yourself flying out of Gate G at BCN; I will know your pain and frustration.

 

We landed at Heathrow around 2:30pm and entered hell. Seriously.  Customs are Heathrow was terrible; a huge PITA.  Essentially after getting off the plane and physically getting into Heathrow, we walked about 10 feet and the line for Customs started.

 

My sister took a number of trips while living in the UK and had forewarned us that we'd probably spend at least an hour in line, but even she was baffled by how long the line was.  At one point, we were standing by some elevators and a flight crew got off. Their jaws dropped when they saw the line.  That's how long it was.

 

Two hours later (about the same amount of time as the length of our flight), we were cleared and off to catch the bus.

 

Mr. Sister lived in Reading, UK, which is outside of London.  It is a small town. I don't know why you'd ever want to visit there unless you lived there or were visiting someone living there.  I doubt any of you readers will ever go there. Nonetheless, I will still blog about it for my memory's sake.

 

So, Reading (it's pronounced RED-ing, not REEDing, like I mistakenly called it several times prior to our trip.  However, one of the bookstores sold "I <3 Reading" totes and I contemplated getting one to look like a book nerd); we took the Rail Air bus from Heathrow directly to Reading's train station (about 30 minutes ride; the bus had Wifi).

 

After a 10 minutes walk to Mr's apartment to drop off luggage, we were officially starving (that dang McD's didn't tide us over well).  We went to Zero Degrees, a microbrew pizzeria, for dinner.  The beer was good, but the food was better. I scared down an entire pizza AND dessert.

 

From there we went back to the apartment.  Mr had to return to work the next day and we wanted to settle into our "home" for the next 5 nights.