England: London Baby!

Continuing on from my last post, early Monday morning Stephen drove us to catch a train in St. Andrews to head back to Edinburgh. Once we got to Edinburgh, we boarded a train to King's Cross station in London. I was so excited to arrive at King's Cross because it plays such a huge roll in the Harry Potter books. Sadly, it really was just another train station, but the nostalgia was there none the less.

Trevor and I slept on the train. It was about a 4-5 hour train ride. We were able to buy lunch onboard which consisted of baguettes (traditional English lunch!). Once we got to London around 1pm, we hopped off the train and were hit with crazy hot weather. London was experiencing a heat wave while we were there, and the temps were consistently in the 90's which we were told was highly unusual for that area. In fact, most apartments and homes don't even have air conditioning over there because it rarely gets that hot.

We found a place close to the train station to store our luggage for a few hours. After that, we hopped on a hop on hop off bus to tour the city. Even though it was hot, we sat on top and enjoyed seeing London! We really got to see basically all of London this way.

One of the things I noticed that I thought was pretty cool was that a lot of the old buildings reminded me of the ones in Boston. Last fall when we went to Boston and did the Freedom Trail (read here), we learned all about how important the city of Boston was for the fight of America's independence and how a lot of the architecture was structured to look like the buildings of London. It really is true! There's a lot of resemblance.

The London Eye

Trev with Tower Bridge in the background

I have to admit, I really didn't take too many photos that day. But we truly had a great time. After riding that bus around the city for a few hours, we got back off around King's Cross station, grabbed our luggage, and headed towards our airbnb.

Navigating the train system (called the Tube) in London was pretty confusing at first. We were used to the Metro in DC, and this was like the Metro on steroids. There were overground tracks and underground ones, and you would go from the overground to the underground, only to hop off and walk a few blocks to a different underground and hop on there, etc. Thankfully our Apple maps navigation on our phones was VERY helpful and updated. We would have been lost without our phones!

We eventually made it to our airbnb where we were staying in a bedroom in a loft apartment where a girl named Sarah lived. I have to admit, this airbnb experience was my least favorite part about our entire trip. First off, Sarah was very strange. We were instructed that we had to take our shoes off IMMEDIATELY upon entering the loft. We also weren't allowed to shower or blow-dry our hair, make noise, etc after midnight. We felt like we were constantly walking on eggshells and we did not feel at home there at all. After our wonderful experience in Scotland with Kat, we were hoping for the same in London but it wasn't the case. It was also so freaking hot in that apartment because she had no air conditioning and only provided us with a tiny desk fan to sleep with. We woke up every morning drenched in sweat and I just remember sweat beads all over my face as I put on my makeup every morning.

That evening we walked to a nearby ramen noodle restaurant and had dinner there which was pretty good. We decided to head back to the apartment and go to bed early that night since we had to get up early the next day to head to the Harry Potter Studios. The next day in London would end up being one of my favorite days on our trip! To be continued...