Anyways, Peggy and I made our flight from Dublin to London with ease and showed up in this lovely city around 9:30 pm 2 days ago. Unfortunately it took us an additional 2 hrs to take a train, subway, and eventually walk to our hostel- which was incredibly hard to find considering that it was 11:30 pm, super dark, raining, and that we were exhausted.
After having a midnight snack of doner kebab (my absolute favorite food that's readily available all throughout Europe and super cheap) we got a map, and decided on a schedule that would allow us to see as much of London in 1 day as humanly possible..... And I believe we did just that!
After waking up at 8am we quickly got ready, and headed down to enjoy our complimentary breakfast. At breakfast Peggy and I decided that we would try to eat on the smallest budget possible so we could spend more at clubs and restaurants in Rome and Spain. So we started out our money scrounging techniques by taking a bunch of the free nutella packets offered at breakfast.
The minute we had finished our breakfast, Peggy and I bolted out the door headed for our subway station called the Underground. When we arrived downtown we whipped out our schedule and started going down the list of all the places we had to see.
The exit from our underground station literally spit us out right in the most beautiful spot on the Thames river where we had a great view of the London Eye, and Big Ben. We then started walking to parliament square when we realized that we were going to miss the changing of the guards! So we sprinted as fast as Peggy's little legs could run down Parliament road, headed for bucking ham palace and with incredible luck we ended up running right into it!
Once we had our fill of British music and men in funny hats we continued
down parliament road, stopping to take pictures with guards who don't move, admiring the beautiful architecture, and taking photos in telephone booths.
Once we arrived at the Buckingham palace we found no way to enter the main area with the fountain, but we saw people over there, so just decided to climb over a little wall-barrier.
Buckingham palace turned out to be outrageously beautiful and we spent quite a bit of time there. However, we had to keep moving because we were getting behind on our schedule; so we took a stroll through st. James park, bought an ice cream cone, and boarded the underground headed for the famed Camden Market.
At the Camden market, we moseyed around hopping from shop to shop seeing everything from t shirts, to marijuana flavored candy, to fake Beats headphones to tattoo stands (real tattoos)... It wasn't the classiest of markets, and it was rather sleazy, but the Pegsters and I both had a fun time looking at all the stuff- wishing we had more room in our bags for souvenirs.
After the Camden market Peggy and I walked to a street vendor where we bought fresh strawberries for £2 and then to a supermarket where a baguette costs only 55 pence and a pizza only £2.50.
We headed back to the hostel and on the way got 2 free poweraids from some stranger handing them out to people.. I initially said no to the offer, but figured it looked pretty safe considering they had a badge... We had a late lunch back at the hostel where we made strawberry and nutella sandwiches costing us only £2.55!
We then headed back downtown to view London's iconic Tower bridge and walk along the banks of the Thames river.
After returning we made our pizza, enjoyed some more strawberries and got free pasta from some girls who made too much. That meals total was about £2.50 and really hit the spot! Overall we spent only £5 on food which translates to roughly $7.50.... Or $3.75 per person... WIN!
After dinner we did some logistics for our trip and headed to bed early so we could wake up at 2am to catch a bus to catch a train to make our 6:00am flight at our small airport way outside of London.
As I type, we are chilling on our train, getting excited for what's ahead of us in Venice!
Ciao,
Michael and Peggy.
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