London (November 2008)

Krug and I took a day trip over to London. We didn’t get to see much, but we still had fun. Ryanair lands about an hour outside of the city, so we bussed in near 2 p.m. The first item on the agenda: Hard Rock Café. We walked through Hyde Park Corner and discovered the British also celebrate Veterans’ Day. The Corner has several war monuments, and they were covered with red flowers. The Hard Rock was a few blocks away, and we soon found out it was the first Hard Rock complete with Eric Clapton’s red guitar.

We then went to see Hairspray the Musical. I haven’t seen the movie, but the musical was hilarious. If you’re looking for a feel-good comedy, I recommend it.

The next day we went straight to the Tower of London and took the hour long guided tour. We had a great time, aside from my choice of footwear. We made it in to see the crown jewels (the Star of Africa looks fake it is so big!), and visited the White Tower, full of armory goodness.

By the time we crossed the Tower Bridge, my feet wanted to fall off (never ever ever wear high heeled boots when sightseeing…), so we went right to our next destination post haste: the London Dungeon (Krug is a fan of horror). It was interesting enough, although some of the facts were a bit sketchy… my impression is it was fun but way overpriced.

From there we caught the tube to the British Museum for high tea. We hadn’t eaten much, but we couldn’t finish the finger sandwiches or desserts. Feeling pretty good, we explored a bit of the museum before we had to leave. I wish we had more time there, I hadn’t realized it was mostly free and had so much cool stuff!

Another lesson learned on this trip was flying while congested is the worst. I had acquired a nasty cold the Friday before, and I am actually still battling it now. Hopefully it will be mostly gone before our trip to Berlin this weekend! If I have time though, I would like to get in another trip to London and its surrounding area. Two thumbs up for London!