The Adventures of Doug and Bec: London

We arrived at the QE Hostel mid-afternoon and basically rested the afternoon. It was a fair walk from the nearest metro station, but it was cheap which the main concern for us was! Our first night there we walked back towards the metro and found a pub for dinner where we got some amazing (but expensive) steaks and Magners Pear Ciders. The only thing we really did that night was purchase two ‘London Passes’ for our sightseeing over the following two days. The London Passes were nearly $100 each for two days, but when you take into account the entry fees for sights in London, it works out very cost effective!

On our first day sightseeing in London we headed to pick up out passes in Piccadilly before heading to Tower of London. The Tower of London should really be called the Castle of London as it really is a castle rather than a tower per se. We spent a good part of the morning walking around the tower walls and looking at the crown jewels and watched some good footage of the queen’s coronation. Was worth the visit, but without the London Pass it would have cost us $30 each!

Our second stop on the first day was the Tower Bridge which really is an iconic symbol of London… much more so than the London Bridge! We both always thought the Tower Bridge was the London Bridge, but it is in fact the next bridge along the Themes which is really plain! From the bridge we walked along the Themes and boarded the HMS Belfast (the huge war ship docked in the Themes) and had a look around. It was the largest war ship used in WW2 and lived up to its size. The corridor when on forever and the facilities were amazing. You could see how a thousand people could stay out on these ships for long periods of time!

After an hour on the Belfast we continued along the Themes to the London Bridge where we did the ‘London Bridge Experience’ which we initially thought would just be some historic stuff about the bridge, but turned out to be a mix of historical information, comedy and horror show! The last part of the tour was a walk through the ‘catacombs’ where numerous zombies jumped out at you in the dark and we got chased by a murderer with a chainsaw!

From the London Bridge Experience we headed back toward the Tower of London pier and boarded a River Themes cruise boat (also included in the London Pass) and headed down the river towards Westminster with the aim of going to Westminster Abbey. Unfortunately when we arrived the Abbey was closed for the afternoon, so we headed back to the hostel for the night after a huge day out in surprisingly sunny London.

Day two in London and we stored our bags at the hostel and headed back out to make more use of our London Passes even through what we had done the day before had already paid them off! Our first port of call was Westminster Abbey were we spent an hour or so wandering around the amazing building and seeing the burial sites of a number of famous people including Charles Dickens. From here we headed Trafalgar Square, at this stage not really knowing what was there, but enjoyed seeing the massive copper lions around the square and getting some good photos climbing up to them like all the other tourists there! After a quick visit here we had another lunch at a Whetherspoons pub before heading off to Kings Cross to find Platform 9¾! From reading up where it was, we discovered that J.K Rowling actually stuffed up in her book and described another station but called in Kings Cross, so there is no brick wall area between platform 9 and 10, but an area near at the terminal has been renovated to provide this tourist attraction and they have put a trolley half into the wall under the sign.

After a 5 minute visit to Platform 9¾ we headed off to the Winston Churchill Britain at War exhibition which gave some good history about the conditions of Britain especially during the time when the cities were bombed. Not a very big exhibit and was totally empty when we were there, but it was quite enjoyable. I would only go there if it is included in the pass, as it probably was not worth the once again exuberant entry price!

Saint Paul’s Cathedral was our next stop and by this stage we were fairly exhausted, but I persisted and climbed the 560 painful stairs to the top of the cathedral to get an amazing view over the city. Once I was up the top I thought it was worth the climb, but after a long day it was quite exhausting! I would suggest doing it early in a sightseeing day rather than towards the end! There were quite a few people struggling with the climb.

From the cathedral we headed to Abbey Road to get a stereotypically photo crossing the road. Unfortunately the road was quite bus and there are no lights at the crossing, so we saw several near accidents and some angry drivers who had to stop while tourist walked out one at a time to get photo crossing the road! It would be annoying to have to drive along that road as there would always be tourist there!

After a long day we headed back to the hostel via Portobello Road to grab out bags before our 7:30pm train to the harbour where we caught an overnight ferry to Amsterdam.