London with the Bestie!

So last Tuesday morning my BFF in the whole world Taylor flew into Glasgow for a nice 3 week visit!
No sooner was she off the plane than we were on an overnight bus to London for a couple days! The bus is about 8 hours long and we arrived (without so much as a wink of sleep) at London Victoria Coach station at 6:40am.  We stopped at a nearby Cafe Nero and sat and had breakfast for a little while before heading on our way.

We walked about 10 minutes before coming to the palace. There wasn't a lot of people since it was so early so it was good time and good weather to take lots of pictures. The changing of the guard was scheduled to happen at 11:30. We decided it would be a cool thing to experience, which gave us a little more than 2 hours to kill. We ended up walking around the large park right beside it, talking and taking pictures and eventually sitting for a bit to recouperate and enjoy the warm sun. When we returned to Buckingham Palace it was a zoo, and continued to grow while we sat on the steps waiting for the guard. The Metropolitan police were kindly going around and telling tourist to keep an eye on their bags and to beware of pickpocketers that frequent the event.

We were kind of far back to really see and know what was going on. We just heard bagpipes from the marching band and saw a bunch of guards walking back and forth a lot. We ended up walking across the park again to Costa Coffee quickly and back one more time to head for Westminister -- good thing we like to walk. Incase you're not entirely aware - Big Ben, Westminister and the London Eye are all in the same area so you get to one and you can see them all.

 Anyways we headed there and took some pictures and did the touristy thing before meeting up with Kelly (who I had met through Amanda) and her friend O'Shieve. We ended up walking to the Boroughs Market which had all sorta of different stalls with lots of food and free samples. Taylor ended up trying wild boar pepperette type thing (which more or less tasted like salami) and then we all enjoyed some sangria.  Next we took the tube (or underground) to Camden where there was another market - like a flea market. Which was very cool, you could find everything there and it was huge. We wandered about, I bought my souvenir London bottle opener, Taylor got a few keychains and we headed onward to find some food. 

It was a pretty cool experience - we definitely would not have found these places on our own. Having people who know the area and stuff is waaaaay better when travelling. 

So after a meal we took the tube back to Waterloo station and went and had drinks on a patio. It was getting dark and kinda cold but it was still fun - we also witnessed a fight break out breifly. One guy got a swift punch to the face but that was about it. 

We then walked back to Waterloo where we parted ways. Taylor and I took the tube to the west end of London where we found and settled incomfortably into our nasty grimy, cheap hostel. It was gross, needless to say - hostels are not really my thing. It was late though an Taylor had already fallen asleep so we survived and were up and out bright an early. 

Friday, we had intentions of doing a hop on hop off tour but we were unable to find the main office of the place we were looking for so we ended up a little lost, in some business district. We ended up renting/riding bikes - like those city ones that you can drop off at various places and can't go outside the city. We went all around, biking on the left side of the road through traffic all the way to the London Bridge - and on the bridge!  Then we headed back to central London. We biked up to Trafalgar Square, found a rack to park the bikes, got some lunch from Pret A Manger and settled in on the ground at Trafalgar to watch 'The Passion of Jesus' - an Easter play put on by London's Bible Society. It was about an hour long and very well done. There had to be hundreds of spectators. We couldn't actually see the people, we just watched it on a big screen. But it was still cool. 

London Bridge

We bike on the left side of the road :)

Taking pictures while biking - mom would be proud

Look at that beauty :)

Us at the Canada House!

Had to take a picture of this spectators socks.

After that we wandered up to Picadilly Circus - checked our a handful of souvenir stores and all that fun stuff. We ended up wandering down the street with all of the most expensive and fancy stores. 

English Breakfast Tea in England? I think so.

We met Mr. Bean :)

<- Golf Sale that way. Advertising at its finest. 

On our way back we stopped in at Caffe Concerto, a little Italian restaurant/cafe and had an absolutely incredible meal. I had a hot duck and pear salad with wine and a (free) strawberry tart for dessert. It was so good. I'm really sad that it's over. 

Doesn't that just look delicious??

Free dessert!

Classic picture of the Ritz. Tea with the Queen anyone?

After dinner we hoofed it back through the park to Victoria to catch the bus home. We stopped in WH Smith for books, snacks and a neck pillow before catching the bus home. The bus was sooo long and uncomfortable as usual, I barely slept. We also unknowingly picked up two friends at our stop in Manchester but didn't realize it till we got to Glasgow at 6am. 

Anyways, we got back to my room and crashed. I ended up sleeping 10 hours after 3 nights of no sleep, so that was nice. 

We had an excellent time and have lots of pictures and memories to prove it!

Next trip: Croatia 

T