Foggy London Town

It wasn’t actually foggy, rainy, or even cloudy at all, at least during our short stay. The weather was so pleasant, in fact, that crazy thoughts started to enter our heads about how nice it would be to live in London.  But with the Greek Islands and beaches of Thailand still ahead of us, we decided to keep our belongings in Seattle for the time being.  

After our four hour flight from Moscow, we easily made our way into the city on the Tube (London’s subway). Being re-immersed in the English language, albeit with a funny accent, was a nice change and made our travel lives just a bit easier.

We had some serious troubles booking a room for a reasonable price that Saturday night. In desperation, we decided to give Hotwire a try, and it worked out pretty well. We ended up with a room at the Hilton in the cozy Islington neighborhood, and paid less than the hostel we stayed at the next two nights. We were a little worn down from all of our moving around in Russia, so we decided to take it easy for our first day. It was kind of like one of our low-key NYC Sundays: slept in late, shopped around, ate lunch in a park, meandered through the neighborhood, etc. 

We moved out of the Hilton that afternoon (which weren’t all that happy about), and moved across town to the Ace Hotel in the West Kensington neighborhood. Ace turned out to be a pretty decent place although we were a bit surprised when our “double room” turned out to be a bunk bed. We chuckled for a minute before Haley called the bottom bunk. That evening, we had dinner with one of Jim’s former colleagues Jeffery, and his wife Claire. We had a great time hearing about their recent wedding in Scotland, re-living some old work stories, and eating a delicious home-cooked meal.

The following day was our only day to take in the tourist sites, so we laced up our walking shoes and hit the pavement early for our usual self-guided walking tour. Over the course of the day, we accomplished the majority of our tourist goals such as the Tower Bridge, the London Eye, Big Ben, St. James and Green parks (both great names in our opinion), Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, and finally, a local pub where we rewarded ourselves with fish & chips and beer.

Here are the pics: