London

Day 1

I got in about middle of the day and took a tram from London City airport to Russell Square, which was where our hostel was located. I checked in threw my stuff down and immediately started walking around the city. Getting hungry, I stopped in at a burrito place called Adobe since I hadn't had a decent burrito in forever. This place was incredibly good. It started getting later so I went back to the hostel to find Dave who should be at the hostel. I meet up with Dave and we go out grab some food and head to the pubs.

Later that night arriving back at the hostel around 2. Our room was an 18 person room mind you. We walk into our room to lay down, music is blasting from some kids bunk. Other kids are up chatting, lights are on. We decide that no way we would be able to sleep and be able to see the city. We immediately check out and cancel our reservations for the rest of the upcoming nights. Across the street we find a hotel at almost the same price for the night.

Day 2

We checkout of the Lionsdale hotel and head out for a good English breakfast. We landed at Fullers Pub, since others had said they have good food. Each of us order this breakfast pie -- it was absolutely horrible. The only decent thing was "the chips" aka huge potato style french fries.

Since we didn't have a hotel for the next nights, we walked around Russell Square asking for all the prices. We roam around for a good hour and can't find anything. We finally stumble upon The Beaumont Hotel. It looked pretty nice we but took our chances. Fortunately for us, they were able to cut us a deal and were able to book an nice room for the remainder of our trip, as well as complimentary breakfast.

Next, we saw the London Eye -- this is basically a big enclosed ferris wheel right on the water that overlooks all of London. It took about 20-25 minutes to go on and was completely worth it we got some great pictures from up there.

After that we hunted down the only Chipotle in Europe. It was probably one of the best meals I have had while abroad.

The rest of the day we walked around and got acquainted with the city -- making stops at Big Ben, Parliament, and St. Paul's Cathedral.

Day 3

Today was changing of the guards. So we went to Buckingham Palace to see it take place. We had decent seating for it and were able to actually march behind the guards for a little -- it reminded me a lot of the Wisconsin marching band marching to the Humanities building. After they changed, they started playing movie classics like 007 and Star Wars on their instruments.

We then went to Tower of London and the Tower Bridge. The Tower of London was pretty weird since so many people have been beheaded there. A funny note about the Tower Bridge, apparently many get it confused with the London Bridge. There are actually 2 London Bridges. The one in London, is right across from the Tower Bridge, and the other one is located in Lake Havasu, Arizona.

Next, we went to Harrods which is a gigantic store with literally anything you could ever buy. Everything from clothes, to sports, dogs, art, furniture, food, and much more. It was pretty crazy walking around there. While we were there we had some of the best milkshakes known to man.

Day 4

We went and checked out the National Museum, which was incredibly interesting since they had so many artifacts from many different cultures. After that we went on a bus tour the rest of the day and got off at a lot of stops to take pictures and warm up. It was pretty cold, but we toughed it out and sat on top. The bus tour was awesome -- it took us literally everywhere we would want to see, as well as some good information behind everything. I would highly recommend it to anyone.

Day 5

Woke up and headed to the airport for my flight home.

Overall, London was great and definitely one of the better cities I have gone too. One complaint I have is there Metro system or "underground" as they call it. It is way too small and takes so much time to get onto each train. Not to mention it is about $3.50 per ride, which is incredibly expensive, just like the rest of the city. Another last thought, is that I really didn't feel like I was in America at all like I thought I would have. Many people living there do not speak english, nor were english. I was pretty surprised about this.