London - Overview

We decided to make a trip to London Saturday. The plan was to jump on an open-top bus tour and get an overview of the city. Step 1, always check the weather before you plan your trip. Step 2, travel arrangements.

Weather: 0 degrees (celsius of course), but sunny ! This should be PERFECT for an open-top bus tour... hmm.

Travel: It's simple! We walk to the train station in Hitchin, no problem. Purchase a ridiculously priced ticket to London, easy enough. Make the train on time (we already know about Ashley's issues with making trains), should be doable. Then we'll just conveniently jump on-board the bus tour that's going to stop right outside Kings Cross. So on we go.

We make the train out of Hitchin; arrive at Kings Cross, flawlessly; then walk out to catch our tour bus. We're thinking, easy enough, just look for a red double-decker bus. See London metro bus pic below:

Twenty minutes later, Ashley spots our stop, only 45 minutes until the next time it comes around! (0 degrees).. We jump on board and begin the tour.



Kings Cross is in the North of London, nothing really to see there, a lot of rundown buildings and renovation, so we decide to stay downstairs and warm up as much as possible until we join the main tour line, beginning at Speaker's Corner - the place where those condemned to hanging were allowed to give their last words, along with a pint of Ale.



Nothing really special to speak of regarding the tour that you probably haven't already seen on TV. We did decide to ride on the top of the bus for most of the tour, which was absolutely freezing but otherwise not worth being there. A couple observations though: One is that Big Ben isn't nearly as big as I thought it would be. Two, the buildings and architecture in London blow away anything I've seen in NYC. The palaces contained within the City would be worth a second look. Most of the newer areas could be found in any other major city in the world, no character, franchised shopping, blah blah, etc...



We did the typical Buckingham palace stop, took some pics that I'll post below. Rode over the Tower Bridge (commonly mistaken as London Bridge), rode under London Bridge (just a normal bridge, not impressive, didn't even take a pic, wasn't worth the 250kb of reusable camera memory).

Hey, look it's one of those guards that don't notice you, walking back and forth in sub-zero temps.





Ashley standing at the gates of Buckingham Palace (she's the one on the right, bundled up so much you can barely tell there's a person inside the jacket, scarf and british hat):





Little Ben, so much cooler than Big Ben:




TOWER BRIDGE, yeah that's right, you thought it was London Bridge:




After the tour, we decided to stick around and check out China town and eat some good chinese food. The Chinatown in london is VERY small and is composed of about 100 chinese restaurants all right next to each other, very few merchants and not a single Coach knockoff in sight! Seriously, why go to Chinatown if you aren't going to purchase mass quantities of illegal items and sell them on ebay for 3 times the price?? The kung-pow chicken was delicious though.

Entrance to the largest Chinese food court in the world:

After a few days here and having had the chance to travel around, we've found that there are a lot of chains in England, including the pubs. Although few manage to retain the character that Hitchin has to offer. Don't ask if they are going to put American Football on the tv either (even though they subscribe to Sky sports that I KNOW is airing the game), especially when some apparently important soccer, oh sorry, football, games are on. Oh yeah, and DARTS?? Who the H-E-Double-Hockey-Stick (kid friendly) watches darts??? Enjoy the playoffs jerks.



PS - We did finally get feeling back in our fingers and toes after our tour... Note: Do not do Open Top tours in London in Winter, even when it's "sunny." Oh yeah, and we got a car today! Stay tuned for the next adventure..