England Trip {London}

We knew that we couldn't be in England without a trip to London. Brighton is about 50 miles south of London. We didn't have a car during our trip, so we took the train. The train rates seem to fluctuate a bit. Peak hours are more expensive, naturally. We found that we could get a cheaper rate if we selected an exact time for our return trip, but we preferred to have some flexibility with that. So getting to & from London for our day excursion cost us about £100. At the current exchange rate, that is $168. A bit pricey, but Chris decided it would be worth it because I wouldn't be stressed out about making the train at a certain time.

With only one day in London, we wanted to make the most of our time, so we had purchased tickets on a local hop on/hop off tour bus company. We got to see a lot of London on the bus. It was spring holiday for a lot of the UK, so London was especially crowded. After an hour or so of riding around London, we decided to get off at Tralfagar Square.

Then we went to the National Gallery.

Photography was not permitted in the National Gallery, of course! Chris has always enjoyed art museums, plus it was free!  We were completely impressed with what we saw of their collection. We've been to several art museums in the US and those may have 1 or 2 paintings from a big name artist, but here, not only were there so many artists that we were familiar with, but several paintings by each one. For example, according to this Wikipedia link, there were 19 Monets, 13 Renoirs, 4 Michaelangelos, and 27 Rembrandts just to name a few. We could have easily stayed longer, but with our limited time, we left after an hour or so.

We got back on the bus for a while and saw more of London. There was a tour guide on the bus who pointed out things & gave us some history of the city.

 

 We got off at the Tower of London stop. We admired the Tower from behind the fence. Back in 1990, on my short visit to London, I had seen the Tower & the Crown Jewels. With our tight schedule we decided to pass on it this time.

Our tour bus tickets included a boat ride on the River Thames. From the Tower of London, the boat took us to the London Eye. After talking to friends before our trip to London, everyone said we had to do the London Eye. We had reserved our tickets in advance to save some time.

We arrived at the London Eye around 4pm. We had to wait in the voucher line to get our actual tickets. That wait was at least 30 minutes. Our actual time to ride the Eye was 7pm, with instructions to get in line at 6:30pm. We were hungry by this time. We had gotten coffees and pastries when we were at Trafalgar Square, but hadn't eaten any meals since breakfast. We decided to walk around & try to find a pub while we waited. We walked and walked. We finally found a pub, but they didn't serve food, so we had to ditch the pub idea & found a restaurant. When we got back to the London Eye area, we still had to wait for another hour or so. There wasn't anything touristy around there, so we just watched some street performers and relaxed a bit.

The views from the London Eye were gorgeous!

Parliament & Big Ben

The River Thames

After our 30 minute ride on the London Eye, we started walking back to the train station. Most of the touristy things to do in London were closed by now, so we decided to head back to Brighton.  

Big Ben

Our attempts at "I'm crushing you" from Kids in the Hall.

Chris posing outside of Parliament.

We passed by Westminster Abbey.

Another view of the Westminster.

And back at Victoria Station, we saw this theater across the street & decided to take a picture for Hannah.

We returned to our little house in Brighton after 10pm. London is a beautiful city, but so crowded and busy. We were very happy to return to a slower paced Brighton.