Day 1 - London

We started our journey with a morning flight from Denver to Washington D.C. and connected with a flight to London. We touched down in London around 10:00pm. This is actually a pretty good time of the day to travel. You're in the air for most of the "day" and land late in the evening in a very different time zone. We made our way from the airport to Paddington Station via the Heathrow Express train. Then we took the underground to Victoria Station, which was very close to our hotel. Slightly disoriented and tired, in general, from traveling, we wandered around a bit trying to find the Cherry Court Hotel. But eventually, we did find it and they were expecting our late arrival. Check-in was quick and friendly and we noticed that they had a single small computer with free internet access. Our room was VERY small, but warm and comfortable. It didn't take much effort to quickly fall asleep even though we were excited for our adventure to begin.

We had a list of the sights we wanted to see, but we didn't schedule every day down to each detail. So this morning we had our first of many mornings of deciding, "What to do today?" With knowledge that London is a HUGE city we decided to orient ourselves somewhat and purchased a 24 hr. ticket on London's Big Bus tour. Often these types of tours are not our cup of tea (pun intended), but it turned out well. We got a nice overview of the city with a friendly, comical, young tour guide. We ended up riding both the "Red" and "Green" lines at some point in the day.

We hopped off and spent half the day at the Tower of London. We started with the wall walk. The Tower of London is surrounded by a series of huge defensive walls. You walk along the eastern walls through exhibits explaining the construction and use of the walls over the last 600 years. Then we entered the White Tower and its incredible arms museums. Construction on the White Tower was begun during the reign of  William the Conqueror (1066-1087). On the lawns surrounding the White Tower you can see the famous ravens. The legend says that Charles II was warned that should the ravens ever leave the tower, the monarchy would fall. So he ordered that the ravens should always remain (meaning someone should feed them!) The crown jewels are an incredibly impressive sight and have been housed at the Tower of London since the beginning of the 14th century. They are still used today by the royal family.

Our Big Bus Tour tickets included a one-way river cruise on the Thames from the Tower of London down to Big Ben. Between the scratchy speakers and thick English accent, the tour guide was almost impossible to understand. But the cruise of the river was nice and it provided a very different perspective on the city than just traveling the streets and sidewalks. We got great views of the Tower Bridge and, further down the Thames, Big Ben and the London Eye ferris wheel. We walked around Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. We sat on the grass in front of the Abbey for a while and watched people the hopped the bus again to continue our tour. We were joined on the bus by a very interesting couple which provided some ironic and comedic company. The middle-aged, balding gentleman was from Germany. He spoke all the languages required to translate our tour guide's banter for his ample Russian wife. So as we strained our ears trying to understand the accent of our tour guide we had to filter out the Russian coming from our German friend sitting directly behind us. Because of the wind streaming over the uncovered roof of the bus, we heard more shouting Russian than English. Of course, most of it was completely unintelligible to our ears. Eventually, we made our way around the city to Trafalgar Square. After enjoying a snack, some shopping and some more people watching, we took a long leisurely walk back down to Big Ben and I took some evening photos of the London Eye ferris wheel from a point across the River Thames.