Winning London (Part II)
Read about our first day in London here.
We woke up a little bit sad on Sunday knowing we had to leave that night. But we had to make the best of our last day in London.
First stop: saying hi to the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
But on our way there, David wanted to find a restaurant that served "real English breakfast," in his words. Traditional breakfast in France usually consists of coffee and bread. They usually don't eat hot food or food that isn't sweet. David is not a fan of French breakfast. It doesn't even include meat!!! The horror! ;)
The food didn't look that appetizing to me, but David was happy! Also, I'm 99% sure the waitress serving us our English breakfast was French, but he didn't want to believe me.
The flag was up at Buckingham Palace, so our friend the Queen was home. I was surprised at how big the crowd was outside considering it's not open for tours in the winter, and there was no changing of the guard that day. Apparently it's still enough of a tourist destination to draw the crowds. Exhibit A: us.
I wanted to stop by because I've been into this Netflix series about young Queen Elizabeth lately- The Crown. And of course, I never really need an excuse to visit a palace.
We decided to spend the rest of our London time at the British Museum. It was my first visit. It's impossible to see everything, so we mostly focused on the ancient Egypt/Greece/Middle East exhibits.
Something funny about London... visiting the museums are free, but visiting the churches are not. At least something was free!
A few things we really liked seeing...
The amazing mummy collection.
After lunch, it was already time to head back to the hotel to pick up our bags. Despite the tiny hotel room and the wifi sucking, it was in a nice area in central London and we had a balcony- so not a total loss. This was our balcony view.
Here's a few other pictures of the streets of London on our walk from the hotel back to Victoria Station.
We had to be those tourists. Fun fact: the day before, David went inside one of the phone booths but it smelled like urine so he didn't stay in long enough for a picture. This time we opted to just pose outside.
We thought the taxis were cute.
Before we knew it, we were on our train to the airport. The last little bit of London excitement was finding a restaurant for dinner that had both fish and chips (which David had been wanting to have) and GRILLED CHEESE for moi. Despite living in a country that is obsessed with bread and cheese, my beloved grilled cheese doesn't exist here. So this was a happy moment.
We flew Easyjet, a cheap airline... but after 2 Easyjet flights I think we decided next time we'd probably rather pay slightly more for an airline that has their life together. Both of our flights were majorly delayed, the boarding process was one of the most painful I've ever experienced, and the best part, I wasn't allowed to bring both my purse and carry-on on the plane. You could only bring 1 bag, no matter how small your purse was. It makes 0 sense, because a purse goes under your seat and doesn't take up space in the overhead bins. Of course, I didn't know this beforehand... so on our first flight there was some stressful last minute scrambling to cram all of my stuff into my other bag and David's backpack. I was just thrilled. However, it did cost only $150 for both of us to fly to London, round-trip. soooo...
All in all, if you can't tell from the rest of my posts, we fell in love with London. We can't wait to go back. David was looking at flights the day after we got home haha. This was the second time for both of us in London, and we hadn't been back since we were teenagers. London was actually the first place I'd ever been outside of the U.S.! Without London, we wouldn't even be married. David first met the missionaries on his trip to London, and obviously we wouldn't have met at church if that hadn't happened.
One of the reasons I loved London the most was just being in a big city. We both loved the history. David really likes British culture. We also both enjoyed having a little break from France. There's something so comforting about being able to speak your own language to everyone and never sound stupid. And everyone was so nice!
There's a lot more to see- we'd also like to go somewhere outside of the city (maybe Cambridge?). I sense a return trip.
P.s. England was the 8th country we've been to together. Not bad for being married less than 3 months ;)
We woke up a little bit sad on Sunday knowing we had to leave that night. But we had to make the best of our last day in London.
First stop: saying hi to the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
But on our way there, David wanted to find a restaurant that served "real English breakfast," in his words. Traditional breakfast in France usually consists of coffee and bread. They usually don't eat hot food or food that isn't sweet. David is not a fan of French breakfast. It doesn't even include meat!!! The horror! ;)
The food didn't look that appetizing to me, but David was happy! Also, I'm 99% sure the waitress serving us our English breakfast was French, but he didn't want to believe me.
The flag was up at Buckingham Palace, so our friend the Queen was home. I was surprised at how big the crowd was outside considering it's not open for tours in the winter, and there was no changing of the guard that day. Apparently it's still enough of a tourist destination to draw the crowds. Exhibit A: us.
We decided to spend the rest of our London time at the British Museum. It was my first visit. It's impossible to see everything, so we mostly focused on the ancient Egypt/Greece/Middle East exhibits.
Something funny about London... visiting the museums are free, but visiting the churches are not. At least something was free!
A few things we really liked seeing...
The amazing mummy collection.
The Rosetta Stone! If you look closely you can see the 3 different languages.
Huge Egyptian statues!
We saw some Asian tourists doing this, so I had no choice but to make David do it too. ;)
This statue used to be at the entrance of an Assyrian palace.
All of the Greek stuff got us in the mood for our future trip there. Hopefully someday!!
There's a big room with most of the original sculptures from the Parthenon. I like how a lot of the things in the British Museum are there just because British people took them lol. In fairness, however, a lot of this stuff might have been destroyed otherwise.
Here's a few other pictures of the streets of London on our walk from the hotel back to Victoria Station.
We thought the taxis were cute.
Before we knew it, we were on our train to the airport. The last little bit of London excitement was finding a restaurant for dinner that had both fish and chips (which David had been wanting to have) and GRILLED CHEESE for moi. Despite living in a country that is obsessed with bread and cheese, my beloved grilled cheese doesn't exist here. So this was a happy moment.
We flew Easyjet, a cheap airline... but after 2 Easyjet flights I think we decided next time we'd probably rather pay slightly more for an airline that has their life together. Both of our flights were majorly delayed, the boarding process was one of the most painful I've ever experienced, and the best part, I wasn't allowed to bring both my purse and carry-on on the plane. You could only bring 1 bag, no matter how small your purse was. It makes 0 sense, because a purse goes under your seat and doesn't take up space in the overhead bins. Of course, I didn't know this beforehand... so on our first flight there was some stressful last minute scrambling to cram all of my stuff into my other bag and David's backpack. I was just thrilled. However, it did cost only $150 for both of us to fly to London, round-trip. soooo...
All in all, if you can't tell from the rest of my posts, we fell in love with London. We can't wait to go back. David was looking at flights the day after we got home haha. This was the second time for both of us in London, and we hadn't been back since we were teenagers. London was actually the first place I'd ever been outside of the U.S.! Without London, we wouldn't even be married. David first met the missionaries on his trip to London, and obviously we wouldn't have met at church if that hadn't happened.
One of the reasons I loved London the most was just being in a big city. We both loved the history. David really likes British culture. We also both enjoyed having a little break from France. There's something so comforting about being able to speak your own language to everyone and never sound stupid. And everyone was so nice!
There's a lot more to see- we'd also like to go somewhere outside of the city (maybe Cambridge?). I sense a return trip.
P.s. England was the 8th country we've been to together. Not bad for being married less than 3 months ;)
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