10 hours in London

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10 hours in London

March 5, 2010 by ruthagtaisteal

Continuing with the catch-up blogging…

We flew out of Madrid to London-Stansted on Sunday morning. And of course because Ryanair is rather crazy and has flights at weird times – with the cheapest flights being late at night and early in the morning – we had a whole day layover in London. I.e. we didn’t fly back to Cork until Monday morning. SO, we had a full day in London. We decided to sleep in the airport again, because otherwise we would have to leave downtown London at around 2 am, and it just wouldn’t be worth it to book a hostel.

In any case, we were all exhausted when we got to London – we had to get up at 3:30 am in Madrid in order to get to the airport. But we got off the plane, got through customs, and found the desks of the different bus companies in to downtown London. I usually prepare and plan extensively for any trip I make, whether it is overnight or a 2 hour trip to a new coffee shop in Portland. I always know where I’m going, and often I’ll have a map (printout from Google Maps) with me. This was not at all the case with going to London. I knew that there were a few bus companies that went into London, and I knew the approximate cost of a bus to London. But I had no map or anything. I did manage to pick up a free tour guide pamphlet/map thing from one of the bus companies at the airport. But basically, we just went up to the counter of the cheapest bus, asked which stop got us closest to all the sights in London, and got on.

We spent the day just walking. We got to Victoria Station at about 10 am (or maybe 11? I don’t remember), and we left about 8 pm. In that time, we walked about 7.5 miles, spent a good hour walking around a bookstore (it was warm!), at least an hour in a very touristy coffee shop/deli thing, and around 2.5 hours in another diner/coffee shop (so much tea).

We walked from Victoria Station to Buckingham Palace (we actually got there when the changing of the guard is supposed to happen – we didn’t realize though, but I think it may have been an off day because it was 11:35 and nothing was happening, so we left), Trafalgar Square, past the House of Parliament, across the Thames, up the other side of the Thames past the London Eye, up to the Globe Theatre, across the Millenium Bridge, to St. Paul’s, then to Charing Cross Road (where we had dinner/sat for a long long time in the wonderful warmth of the diner), then back to Victoria Station and back to the airport. Where we spent another night sleeping. At least this time we managed to grab a few benches and so weren’t nearly as cold as the previous time when we slept on the floor. Still, definitely not the most comfortable place to sleep.

I mapped out our walk on Google Maps:

Our walk around London, starting and finishing at Victoria Station.

Overall, London was okay. Compared to Madrid it was kind of eh. It was so touristy – Madrid was a mix of some tourists and more locals, but London seemed to be only tourists. Maybe that was just because it was a Sunday and we were only in the really touristy areas? We were also really cold and really exhausted. I guess I’m glad to have seen a lot of London because now I have an idea of where I want to go back to when I get the chance (which will be, at the latest, in June). We didn’t go into any of the museums or anything because we really didn’t want to shell out any money, and I think getting to go inside these places would make visiting London much more interesting.