After the wedding we were lucky enough to get a few days to spend in London. My memories of the city are from my senior year of high school when we spent a day and half here. So I don't remember much. Despite Paul being half english, he hasn't visited London itself a lot, the last time when he was a teenager as well. So for both of us it was a trip to discover the city for real.
Our first stop was of course to take the Fat Tire Bike Tour! We did the Royal London tour passing through all the major parks and palaces. Loved our little group, our guide, and getting a feel for the city.
The next day we started bright and early heading to the east end to visit the Tower of London. We wondered through everything in a good 2-3 hours and even saw the jewels!
Next stop was up the Tower Bridge where we had a tour of the towers, upper deck and the engineers' room. Then we had lunch underneath the bridge right on the water at a little pub.
A lot of time was spent wondering around and stopping into shops near Shoreditch and then the next day as well in Camden. That afternoon we joined a Muggle tour for Harry Potter sights in the city. Very well done, and we both enjoyed it. This was the alley that inspired Nocturne Alley in the books, you know, the creepy one. We also went down the alley that inspired Diagon Alley, which was full of book shops.
We had spent the month before our trip watching all the Harry Potter movies, Sherlock, some Jane Austin, and Love Actually to get us in english spirit. I also read books solely by english authors. I highly recommend doing this before any trip. :)
Where is that great picture of the leaky cauldron? I put a copy of it on my bathroom wall (had to move the tortoise to a different wall). Who were the other people in your bike tour?
ReplyDeleteThe leaky cauldren entrance was a flower shop by the bourough's market. The rest of the group were all Americans from various places.
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