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Wow! We are both totally blown away by our first week in London!
I've heard that you'll either love or hate London so I'm happy to let you know we are both firmly in the "love" camp!
We are now staying with some friends in Wokingham so it's a good chance to rest and catch up and reflect on our first week.
Day 1, Monday 18th: Arrived and walked to St James Park
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Flew in to Heathrow at around 9.30am and got straight on the underground - took the Piccadilly line to our destination - Piccadilly backpackers. We were really pleased to walk straight out of the station and see the backpackers straight ahead about 20 metres away, so we were right in the center of all the action! We were tired, but determined to stay awake so we took a walk through Piccadilly square and down Regent St. Found a cute grassy square (St James's sq) to chill out in for a while (London seems to be full of squares and parks around every corner - they say it's one of the greenest cities in the world).
Carried on past the Duke of York column to St James Park (not sure who St James was or what he did, but he has a lovely park!). Had our first meeting with some squirrels and also saw lots of birds and ducks.
We instantly noticed how close everything is! We sighted Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, and Big Ben all not too far away.
The other thing you can't help but noticing is how beautiful all the buildings are. In New Zealand we have such a small collection of really beautiful old buildings (eg, the Auckland Museum) so when you see one you instantly think "wow, that building must be important!". But in London (particularly in central London) EVERY building is so beautiful! There has been so much thought and care put into each one it is amazing to see.
Day 2, Tuesday 19th: Free walking tour
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We saw a sign at the backpackers for a free tour so we thought we'd give that a go. Turns out it was a 3 hour WALKING tour (those who know us know we don't like walking very much!) but it was totally awesome! We started at the Wellington Arch, saw Green park, Buckingham Palace (where the Royal Standard was flying so the queen was home!), Kew Palace, Pall Mall, Trafalgar square, 10 Downing St, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and heaps more. It was really amazing to see all these places that I've only heard about or seen on TV.
After the tour we were pretty tired (!!) so we had a late lunch at McDonalds (good ol' Maccas) just next to the London Eye, then caught the tube back to the backpackers.
Day 3, Wednesday 20th: London Eye and Westminster Abbey
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We started the day with our Britbound meeting to sort out our bank accounds, UK sim cards and a bunch of other stuff. (Britbound are the company that helped us get our visas and get sorted, we highly reccommend them!). After that we headed out for a "flight" on the London Eye, something I've wanted to do for ages and it didn't dissappoint. Awesome views! Then we were priveleged to attend the Evensong service at Westminster Abbey - so amazing to experience a church service in such an incredible church!
We wanted to hang around until it got dark to take photos at night, so we went for a walk to fill in time. Turns out it doesn't get dark until about 9pm (the weather is beautiful at the moment, by the way) and we ended up getting lost (just a little) so a short walk became an epic trek. To top things off the camera battery died, so no chance for photos. Never mind, the evening ended well anyway when we had a lovely dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant.
Day 4, Thursday 21st: Central London walking tour, Tea with Aunty Robin
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The tour guide from Tuesday's tour reccommended another tour of central London (also known as "The City" or "The Square Mile") so we headed to Tower Hill on the tube for our second walking tour. This one was just as great as the first. We learnt a lot about London's history including the plague and the great fire, and saw lots of amazing places like the Tower of London, Tower Bridge (also the Millenium Bridge and London Bridge), St Paul's Cathedral and the area of "Temple". (Check out our photo gallery for pics!).
After the tour we stopped at a lovely square in Sommerset house for lunch - apparently this becomes an ice skating rink in winter!
Then we had a funny incident on the way to Trafalgar Square to meet Aunty Robin: I knew how to walk from Piccadilly circus to Trafalgar square (about 10 - 15 mins walk), so the plan was to find the nearest tube station and get back to Piccadilly (probably about 10 mins). The next station we found was Charing cross. Luckily, outside the station was a bus stop, so we decided to take a bus to Trafalgar square instead. This turned out to be a great idea, because 1) we got to ride a big red bus, and 2) it turns out Trafalgar square was only about 2 blocks away, saving us about 20 minutes!
We enjoyed a lovely time catching up with my Aunty at the National Gallery cafe, then headed back to the Backpackers to check into our new room (due to the popularity of this backpackers, it wasn't possible to book one room for 5 nights - we had to book three different rooms!).
Day 5, Friday 22nd: Tower of London
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Friday we had planned to meet some friends for lunch, but we had a few hours to kill in the morning so we thought we would check out the Tower of London, since we had walked past it the previous day on the walking tour. Pretty much as soon as we walked in the gate and looked around at all the buildings we realised that we were not going to see everything in just a few hours so we cancelled our lunch plans (sorry guys!). We ended up staying until after 5pm and we still want to go back again to see more!!
Nathan and I are fascinated by old buildings - we even joined a heritage society in New Zealand a few years ago so we could visit lovely buildings like the Keri keri stone store etc. So to experience the White Tower, which was built nearly ONE THOUSAND years ago, was just so amazing! Mind boggling even. Plus there is so much history and so many interesting stories related to the tower and the surrounding area, this visit has definately been a highlight for us!
Unfortunately we had to leave to check into the backpackers before 6pm, then headed to De Hems pub to meet some other Brit Bounders. Nath and I weren't really into the pub scene in New Zealand, but I had a feeling we might quite enjoy ourselves in London. I was wrong. :P Well, so far anyway. So we didn't stick around at De Hems but headed to a lovely chinese restaurant for dinner instead.
I was still hoping to catch some photos of the London eye and Big Ben in the dark, so we headed to Waterloo station (and got a little lost in the station. One word - big!), then managed to grab some photos before heading home home via tube via Westminster station.
Day 6, Saturday 23rd: Camden Town, train to Wokingham
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Saturday we were lucky enough to catch up with some friends from New Zealand - Naeomi & Drew. It was so much fun to catch up and see some friendly faces - hope to catch up with you guys again soon! They took us to Camden town for a brief look through the markets - wow, what a lively fun exciting place that is! The highlight was the Cyberdog store (www.cyberdog.net) - DEFINATELY going back there again!
Unfortunately we couldn't hang around too long as we needed to check out of the backpackers and catch a train to Wokingham from Waterloo station. Fortunately that went very smoothly (as has everything so far) and we ended up in the cutest little town of Wokingham to stay with our most awesome friends Allan and Jenny Tiplady. We also got to catch up with some other friends Brian and Jan Catchpole, so that was great.
Day 7, Sunday 24th (onwards): Sleep!
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The Tiplady's and the Catchpoles headed out for a few days sightseeing and left us the place to ourselves, so for the last week we have pretty much just been chilling out and catching up. We have wandered into Wokingham a few times and spent one day in nearby Reading which was fun. They are both a very different pace from London, but they are quite lovely, so I think we will enjoy being based in the area.
Hopefully next week we will have a few more adventures to share with you!
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