London

Saturday morning, bright and early (4:30AM) we left the apartment, walked to the train station 25 minutes away, took a 30 minute train to the Cologne airport, took a 1 hour plane to Stansted, and took a 45 minute train to London. We finally made it there around 8:45AM (London is an hour behind Düsseldorf though). Exhausted, but excited, we took the subway to our first stop - the Imperial War Museum. Ben was in his element here, of course, explaining to me what each tank and rocket and gun was for…and even having a little Indiana Jones moment...

After the museum, we only had about an hour to kill before meeting up with Jenn and Scott at their hotel. So we wandered over to London Bridge (it wasn't falling down though) and Tower Bridge, stopping along the way to share a hotdog and do some shopping at a Christmas shop and some souvenir stands.

After meeting up with Jenn and Scott, we all went to a pub and had some Fuller's, fish and chips (well, Jenn and I had that - Scott got some beef pie thing and Ben had a sandwich because he isn't eating fried food and wouldn't even cheat for fish and chips in London!!), and a great conversation with the British people at the table next to us. We walked around Piccadilly Circus (a famous shopping area) and went into Hamley's, this amazing, 6-story toy store that happened to have a Harry Potter display at the entrance!

In case you're wondering, that is a lego structure of Hagrid! From here, we went straight to the theater and saw Les Miserables…which was just phenominal!! Even Scott, who doesn't care for musicals usually, gave it a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10 (Ben and I both gave it a 10, and Jenn gave it a 100 :)). Our seats were on the second row, right next to the orchestra pit...you could see the spit flying and it was great!! We had a nice Chinese dinner after that, where the server gave me and Ben chopstick lessons...but to no avail, for me anyway.

Ben and I had quite a time trying to find our hotel at 1 in the morning since we had yet to check in. The subways were no longer running that late, the bus we were waiting on never came since the traffic going the other way was so bad (yes, that bad at 1 in the morning), so we ended up taking a cab. Then, our hotel was terrible…it was right off the lobby so you could hear every noise there and outside the window to the street, the door let in light from the lobby, the bathroom was so dirty I wouldn't even take a shower in it (Ben did though- floor was filmy and hairs on the shower wall!)…so I was just praying the sheets were clean. No bed bugs, at least. At checkout the next morning, Ben asked for the e-mail of the manager, and the guy at the reception desk didn't even so much as ask if there was a problem. Oh well, we were only there 7.5 hours (2:30AM-10AM).

Day 2 began with history again…went to the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms. It was a flop, in our opinion, at least compared to what Ben had built up in his mind. We met up with Jenn and Scott afterward near Big Ben, where I couldn't resist this picture...

...or this one...

That is supposed to be me going into the Ministry of Magic (all you Harry Potter fans understand, I'm sure). Once we met Jenn and Scott, we decided to take a bus tour. We sat on the open top and luckily it was a nice, sunny day.

The tour took us to see all the main sites- Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, Westminster Abbey, etc., and also a lot of other random sites, like this street where tons of famous people live or used to live (Ian Fleming, Sean Connery, Michael Cane, etc.).

We also passed by the building where the statue at the top is used for Gringotts Bank in Harry Potter, but didn't manage to get a good picture of it. Our tour guide was hysterical, so it made for a great bus tour. We went to lunch at another pub where I had some great, spicy curry, Jenn had fish and chips again, Scott had the meat pie thing again, and Ben had chicken stir fry. We ended the afternoon walking around a ritzy shopping area and sampling some delicious dates at a shop that only sold dates…apparently you can only get these dates in certain parts of the world, because they were nothing like the dates we get in Kentucky.

London made for a crowded, fun-filled 2 days, but extremely expensive given how short it was! We had a great time with Jenn and Scott and it was really hard to say goodbye, but we'll see everyone soon…31 days!