London Part I

November 5th

Dara and I headed for the airport around 5:30pm. We used our metro passes to get there, but we couldn't actually get into to the airport with them because it's in a different zone. The guy made us pay there, to get into the airport, so we essentially wasted one of our passes, but he also didn't charge us the actual rate...we think he felt sorry for us. Stupid metro.

Once we got in we scoped out food and ended up at Burger King because they took cheques. We then ran into one of Dara's friends, Jasmine, who goes to the youth group stuff with her, and she was on our flight. We landed around 10:15 at night, London time, and went through customs to get a stamp! Yay for stamps! But, they grilled me. "Who are you traveling with? Where are you staying? How much money do you have? Do you have any relatives here? Where are you coming from? Where are you headed back to? How long will you be here? How long have you been in Valencia? Why are you in Valencia? When are you leaving Valencia?" It was insane. Freaking insane. 

We then had to buy train tickets into central London, about an hour away, and ended up taking the same train as Jasmine. After we got into the center Dara and I had to buy metro passes to the stop closest to our hostel. We bought the tickets, but they wouldn't let us through, which was worrisome, but there was a nice metro lady there, who spoke English, that let us through.We walked to the hostel and got in and settled by 1:30am.

November 6th

We decided to "treat ourselves" and sleep in. We left the hostel around 10 and walked to this tiny little cafe for breakfast. The Mapa Cafe. They had REAL breakfast, it was amazing. I had hot chocolate with eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns and tomatoes (that Dara ate for me) and we were supposed to get toast, but only one lady was working and we didn't need it that much. From there we walked to the tube, the metro, and took it to Westminster. There we walked to the London Eye to get our "package" tickets. We bought a deal online for The London Eye, The London, Dungeon, and Madame Tussauds, the wax museum, 

We went to Madame Tussauds first because it wasn't as centrally located. We took TONS and TONS of photos. Emphasis on the TONS, didja notice? It was much larger than we anticipated and every time we thought we were at the end, we weren't. *The majority of our trip photos were taken on Dara's phone, so they will most likely be on Facebook at some-point, but at the moment, I don't have very many. Once we got out the sun was getting low, because it was almost 4 o'clock and the sun sets there at 4:30, how weird?!

We decided to go to King's Cross next and get our Platform 9 3/4 photo, because, it's London, it's a must. It was a lot of fun. They actually have people there to hand you, your house's scarf and a professional photographer, I wasn't expecting that. We waited in line for 20 minutes and the people working there were really energetic and entertaining, we had a great time. 

We went back to the London Eye just as dusk was really starting to settle in. It got dark in our half an hour loop, so we saw the city mostly in darkness, which is honestly a super cool sight. Everything was lit up and it was reflecting off the water. It was a gorgeous sight.

Dara and I then walked along the river. It was only 6pm, but it felt like midnight because of how dark it was. We found this Italian place to eat at, that wasn't too expensive, which is a plus. We were going for cheap this trip...the USD to GDP is $1 to 1.5£, it's ridiculous. Once we were done eating we continued our trek and came across The London Bridge. We walked across it and towards our hostel, which wasn't far from it. It was a great end to fantastic day.