London Day 1

London is much bigger than I thought. That may sound stupid, but what I have learned is that most cities in Europe are much smaller that we imagine in the States. In the States our cities are built much larger and more spread out, not so in Europe. London is pretty damn spread out. I tried walking from place to place, but it took way too much time and energy. The city is already pretty confusing compared to a lot of other cities. Finally, I decide to go the easy route. I buy a ticket on one of the "hop-on Hop-off" tour buses. This gives me free transit for the day and a rough layout of the city.

The full loop is a little over 2 hours. I do most of it seeing the major sites (London Bridge, Tower Bridge, London Tower, Big Ben, Parliament, the giant ferris wheel, etc). Pretty much most of the buildings to see. It gave me a great mental layout of the city and allowed me to map out my route for where and when I want to visit specific attractions.

I stop at Buckingham Palace first because I just happen to be in time for the Changing of the Guards, which only happens once a week. I watch the festivities with the other few thousand people there, listen to the music, etc and then decide to stroll through the beautiful park next to the palace.

I get on the bus again and get off near the British Art Museum and Traflagar Square. I hear there is a free Harry Potter walking tour leaving from this spot and decide to go on it. I have 45 minutes until it starts so I walk around the beautiful and large square. It has some monuments, giant lions you can climb on, the worlds largest ship-in-a-bottle and a giant count-down clock for the Olympics.

Finally, the tour starts and we start walking. The tour focuses on scenes from the movie that were filmed in London. It starts over very slow and sadly doesn't get any better. The tour guide is slow, it is taking forever and the stuff we are seeing isn't very impressive. It is small things. Then he says incorrect information about the movies. He describes a scene and completely gets what happens wrong. (when they are knocking out MM personal to steal their identities and Ron is dragging the women into the closet - the guide says he is saving Hermonie who has been knocked out when showing the photo). At this point I bail, not worth the time.

I decide instead to visit the art museum. A lot of it didn't interest me as it was similar Renaissance work I have seen too much of on this trip already. The exciting part was the Van Gogh's, Monet's, and Rembrant's they had. Including Van Gogh's Sunflower painting and Monet's Waterlillies. I admired those paintings for quite some time.

Eventually leaving the art museum I decide to head to yet another museum, but this time history instead of Art. I went to the British Museum as it is called. They have a hued collection of Egyptian, Roman and Greek artifacts. Including the Rosetta Stone. I stared at that stone for at least 20 minutes. It is both huge and beautiful. It has three languages on it. Hyroglypics, Ancient Greek and the Egyptian phonetic language.

I then walked around and saw plenty of other artifacts. They have the largest collection of pieces from the Parthenon from Greece outside of Greece. I just love history and got to see so many incredible pieces in one place. Soon after this the museum starts to close and I head back to my hostel.

Again, I find out how large the city is. My hostel doesn't seem far on the map, but the walk took 40+ minutes when it looked like 10 compared to other cities I have been in.

The night was pretty boring. At this hostel, I sadly haven't met any fun people to go out with at night so far, so I wander the area around my hostel and then chill out in the lobby chatting with random people and surfing the web.

But tomorrow, STONEHENGE!