“Finally rolled out of bed at 8:30am after 13 hours of what some might call ’sleep’. I called it ‘pure bliss’. “
- from my journal entry on Sept 9th
The sleep we had our first night in London was amazing, but we wanted to waste no time going out to see London. We stopped downstairs at our little home away from home for our first English breakfast. We were a little worried they wouldn’t have coffee, but our fears were put to rest when we entered. A table near the seating area had coffee, tea, juice, milk, cereal, yogurt, croissants, cheese, toast, and jam. Everything to keep us going throughout the day. I didn’t have a huge breakfast, but given my aversion to eating in the morning, it was quite an accomplishment to get me to eat at all.
After breakfast, we took a walk to one of the underground stations. We decided to go off the beaten path a bit and not head to the one nearest to our hotel. Instead, we wanted to get a sense of our neighborhood and we headed to one a few blocks away. Fortunately, you’re never TOO far from at least two or more stations.
We loved the architecture of the neighborhoods we found ourselves in.
We decided to take the tube down to the London Eye and ride that first. We figured if there was any sort of wait, it would be least busy in the morning. Fortunately, there wasn’t much (if any) of a wait, and some amount of money later (we didn’t bother convert it to dollars so we didn’t stress over it), we were getting onto the London Eye! It moves so slowly that you get into the car while the whole thing is still moving. We had the opportunity to see the entire city from the sky.
International Train Station
Big Ben and the dirty Thames River
Katie with the Gherkin in the background
Buckingham Palace, nestled quietly in the park
I like this picture because it doesn’t quite look like she’s in the gondola car thing
Just getting to the top of the London Eye took about 5 to 6 minutes, which gave you enough time to see the entire city from different levels.
This was the car next to ours. You can see how the track rotates around the outside of it. We were in the car with about 15 other people, a few of which were Croatian soccer fans. Unfortunately that meant that some of our pics from up here had red and white checkers overlaid onto them from their reflection! 
One of our co-passengers took this. I may look fine, but I was still quite a bit jet lagged.
Self portrait from ground level.
After we finished on the London Eye, we walked back across the river and down by House of Parliament.
The Thames looks even dirtier up close.
Katie’s senior pic in a little park just behind the House of Parliament
Katie getting eaten by a huge lion
After our stroll through the park, we got hungry, so we decided to find some lunch. Fortunately it was lunch time for the rest of the population too, so we followed people towards the restaurants. We found a small sandwich shoppe and proceeded to wait in line. As we ordered, we realized how strong some people’s accents were. When Katie ordered her sandwich the lady asked “Do you want butter?” but what it sounded like was “Do you want mustard?” So Katie said yes, only to be surprised during her first bite of her sandwich.
Even with the butter, the sandwiches were super good. Katie’s was a Tuna with sweet corn and red peppers, and mine was a plain turkey sandwich. I was too confused as to how to order and what exactly they were saying that I decided to forego any extras. We sat down in the grass in a park right near and ate our meals.
After lunch, we continued walking around (not really sure where we were going) but we did find our first red telephone booth!
I had heard a few years ago that they were getting rid of these, but we saw quite a few there.
Eventually found our way to a main shopping district.
Katie restrained me from buying anything in here. Ferrari prices PLUS the exchange rate made things way too expensive.
We stopped in the Apple store too, just to see what things were like and to find the BBC store on Bing maps.
At this point I broke down. I had only been gone from a computer for two days. And so when we went into the Apple store, Katie went off to go to the bathroom and I checked my work e-mail. I remember thinking, “It’s only once. What’s it going to hurt?” Sometimes I think I’m addicted to my e-mail.
We continued walking on, equipped with our newfound knowledge of the general proximity of the BBC store, since we hadn’t actually thought to write it down. Finally we got to where we thought it was. And it wasn’t. And we walked up 2 blocks. And over 2 blocks. And back down 2 blocks. And back over 2 blocks. Until we became so frustrated that we gave up.
Fortunately we found a pub, named “The Cock“. We sat down and enjoyed the sights and sounds of London outside of our window.
The weather was quite nice and so the door was left open and some of the windows too.
After getting off of our feet for an hour or so, we continued walking, determined to find this BBC store (I really wanted a Top Gear shirt or something of the equivalent). Thinking this might be attached to it, we continued walking closer towards this:
Alas, no store, and no BBC anywhere to be found. But after our drinks, we had to use the bathroom. And since most (if not all) stores don’t have public restrooms, we found ourselves using a public restroom.
(I used the Men’s one, in case you were wondering)
Public restrooms in the states are pretty much always disgusting, and that’s what surprised us the most about these. Here we are, downtown in one of the biggest cities in the world, and the bathrooms were way cleaner than you’d find in a typical gas station or local chain restaurant back home!
Apparently it made quite an impression on me since I wrote an entire paragraph about it in my journal. Although I did note that they had the “hand washer” machines like they have in the K-State Union where it dispenses soap, dispenses water, and dries your hands without you having to move them or press anything.
At this point it was about 4 o’clock in the afternoon and we were quite tired, having been on our feet most of the day. So we headed back to the hotel and passed out for a couple of hours nap. Watched the England vs. Croatia game on television — it was qualifiers for the World Cup. Then went out and found a Thai restaurant to eat at just down the street and got some cookies at the supermarket on the way back. Somehow managed to restrain myself from buying the “Roast Beef & Onion” flavored potato chips. Met an American in line in the market who was talking to everybody and not quite with it. We were nice to him, but rather embarrassed to have him find out that we were American, too. I wonder if a high percentage of the ex-pats who live in other countries are crazy, or just the ones we run into.
Back to the hotel & finished up reading the book I started reading the day before “The Year of Living Biblically” by A.J. Jacobs. Very interesting read.
Remember thinking that I hoped the drunk guy from the customs line we were in the day before had made it through by now. He had been behind us and kept falling over into us, trying to hold onto the little poles that hold the ropes in long lines. Unfortunately for him (and us) these silver guide poles were not actually attached to the ground besides by gravity, so he kept falling over and into us, all the while mumbling and laughing periodically. I wondered how he was going to answer the questions for customs.
Oh, and England won 5-1.
