We got to the airport around 4 in the afternoon. It's gonna be a long flight from Atlanta to London. We planned to travel to at least 4 countries in Western Europe so the packing had to be very light. We came up with 2 suitcases, a larger one for my wife, and a smaller one for me.
It took over an hour to get to Atlanta Airport for our connecting flight. From there, it would take another 7 hours before we would touch down at Heathrow Airport. Since London's time is 5 hours ahead, we would have to flight all night, and get there late in the morning the next day. We managed some sleep during the flight, but when the plane touched down, we felt very energetic. We are ready.
Going thru custom here in London is a piece of cake. They make it so easy for the tourists. If you have nothing to declare, you don't have to wait at all, just walk right out. The weather was very gloomy. I could feel wetness in the air. It was neither cold nor warm, but very comfortable. Getting a taxi is very simple. Just wait in line until your turn. All the taxi cabs here are smaller cars which looked very similar to our PT Cruisers. The first thing that gave me a shock is the gas price. It cost 1.75 British Pound a litter. It came out close to $12.00 a gallon. People in the U.S whine when the gas price hit $3.50 a gallon. The next shock came a half an hour later when we stopped in front of our hotel. The taxi fare was 90 British Pound, equal to 160 U.S dollars.
We stayed at Hilton River Dockside Hotel. It's on the west bank of the Thames River with a beautiful view of London. It came with a huge cost. Everything was expensive in London, from food to hotel. The only good thing so far is the beautiful river in front of us. Crossing the river to the other side would lead us to London. The hotel had ferries to carry its customers to the other bank every 30 minutes. It took less than 10 minutes to get across. After settle in, we took turn to take a shower, change, and ready to explore the city.
London is a magnificent city with all of its reserved history of the last few hundred years at least. Public transportation is almost the only mean of going from place to place. We armed ourselves with the prepaid city pass and transportation pass, which meant we could hop on any buses, trams, or underground trains without stopping to buy tickets. It started raining harder and harder toward the evening before slowing down a bit. It took us half a day to master London underground systems. There were lots of trains hopping, but it still required lots of walking from station to station. The good thing is the weather. It was around 58-64 degree the whole time we was there, making walking easy.
First, we had to find a super market to shop for some of our toiletry. That turned into a huge struggle. There are only a handful of market thru ought the city later we found out. There's one closer to our hotel, so that settled it.
We went around the city without a purpose for the rest of the afternoon, just to feel out. We both got really tired after a long flight, so we decided to get back to the hotel to get some extra rest ready for the next day. Lucky for us that I did not book a dinner-cruise on the Thames River or else we wouldn't come back until midnight, because the trip would start at 8:00pm. We went to bed around 9:00pm, and had our first night in London.
There were thousand of people gathered around under the light rain. It's an awesome sight. The church is so big that no camera could take the whole view in, and it's beautiful as well. This claims to be the second biggest church after St. Peter in Rome. And it lives to its reputation. Surround this area of just a few hundred square meters, there are more than 3 churches. They are all very large by any standard, but became dwarfed by St. Paul Cathedral. And not too many people acknowledged their existence.
It continued to rain thoroughly for the rest of our trip. But we learned to live with it. That's life in London during the summer. There were lots of walking, but the good thing is the buildings in London are all tall, and very close together covering almost all of our steps in all directions.
After an hour of train rides, and walking, we arrived at the London Bridge. It looked so captivating. The construction brought my imagination to its fullest, the medieval time with the kings, queens, princesses, and last but not least, who is not fascinated with the knights in those famous movies!
The weather's overcast and gloomy of the rain, plus my unskilled photography didn't do it justice, but still ...
We then headed to Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress, more commonly known as the Tower of London nearby. The whole area is really big. It has a bunch of building constructed together within a surrounding wall to make it very much like a fortress. The gate was massive and imposing, with scrolled iron bars, and an ornate crest at its center. It carried all the charm of the medieval portcullis. It took us quite some hours to complete the White Tower, St. John's Chapel, the Crown Jewels, The Torture Chamber ... etc. It carried over few hundred years history of England. It's awesome is all that I could say.
Looking at these armors, and weapons amazed me with no end. How did they move around in those metal suits?
The swords for the kings, and his knights were also compelling. They are huge and long. I don't think a shorter than 6 foot, and under 200 lb man can comfortably carry it around let alone swinging it. Does it mean the old English people and soldiers were bigger and taller than now? Or it may had been the soldiers, the knights of the fighting forces, were the chosen biggest, and strongest fits of them all?
I learned it for the first time the history of the English Pound, and how it was made hundred years ago. It truly was fascinating.
We came out of the castle around 3:00pm. After grabbing a quick lunch, we headed toward the biggest shopping mecca of London, the Harrods. It took a few more train hopping, we got to its nearest train station, the Knightsbridge. But it was still a longer than a mile walking distance. There were at least few hundred stores with all the luxury brand you can find were all here. It's no wonder when people talk about London, they talk about shopping at Harrods. The young, rich, famous, and popular people all gathered here for shopping. It had so many shops that I dared to count. We were very surprised to see the biggest spenders were the young and middle age Chinese. I wondered how or where they accumulate their wealth from!
We finally got back to our hotel late in the evening. It was still raining non stop. We decided to eat at a luxury Chinese restaurant closer to our hotel. The service was kinda fancy for a Chinese food establishment. To our surprise, the dishes were plain, simple and resembled nothing like the regular Chinese food we normally eat in the U.S. And so much so with the bill, It cost us a little more than 120 US dollars for a meal for 2 with neither appetizers nor desserts. It was a mere 2 bottles of still water, 2 small bows of hot and sour soup, and 2 simple entree completed with a small bow of steam rice. What a rip off!
We got to get more rest for a long day tomorrow. The constant rain brought us quickly to our sleep.
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