London in a day

We slept in, and over egg breakfast, had a proper chat with our host, Sue. Originally, we were slotted to leave her house by 9, to begin the day I had scheduled. But with our late night, we slept in until 10 or so. The choices were to shorten the London list, or to do it all the next day and shift our stays with upcoming hosts, or push on and do as much as we could. We chose to push on!

About two months ago, in planning this day in London, I googled "things to do in London when you have no money and only one day." I got some helpful tips which I used as the foundation of my plan for the day. To give you the abbreviated list, this was my (admittedly selfish) list of things I wanted to do in London (in no particular order):

• Walk west along the south bank of the Thames, seeing all the sights, from London Bridge to Big Ben
• Piccadilly Circus
• Trafalgar Square
• Leicester Square
• Berwick Street Market (for lunch)
• 3 Savile Row (where the Apple offices were, where the Beatles played on the rooftop)
• Abbey Road Studios and crosswalk
• Stanley Kubrick archives
• Hyde Park
• Royal Albert Hall/Albert Memorial
• Harrod's
• Buckingham Palace
• ride the underground (tube)
• ride a double-decker bus
• British Library

Even though we started around noon instead of 9, we actually got everything on our list done except for Trafalgar Square and Berwick Street Market. Oh, we also missed the treasures gallery of the British Library (it closed earlier than the rest of the library) so we missed seeing the magna carta and handwritten Beatles lyrics. Thanks to an all-day travelcard, we could use the tube and buses to get from place to place quickly. We didn't exactly have much time to spend at any particular place, but we got it all done.

Sue walked us to the tube station at Highgate

Going underground

First tube ride

Leicester Square

3 Savile Row - Beatles on the roof

A rest in Hyde Park - Cristina had just fallen in a hole, but you'd never have known it if I hadn't told you.

At the Albert Memorial, with Royal Albert Hall in background

Double-decker to Harrod's - Yeah, tourism, baby!

 BuckPal Selfie

Park near Buckingham Palace

On my way back from the Stanley Kubrick archives (there's another post about that) I got on the wrong Northern line. It was rush hour, so the train was packed. And I mean packed. There's something surreal about being pressed vice-like between the firm bottom of an attractive blonde and the belly of an Orthodox Jew. My back was to the door, and because of the curvature of the train, I was bending over, face to face with the person in front of me. And when the doors opened at the next stop, I'm thought surely no one else can get on this train, but a few more people got on, pushing into me like we're in the front row of a general-seating rock concert. You could smell the humanity. And while I was riding along in this transit sardine can, I noticed that a woman standing in the middle of the car was actually reading a newspaper, holding it in one hand and grasping the hand loop with the other. How could she have enough room for that, I thought, while the fragrance of another woman's hair in my face evoked images of meadows of wildflowers. Then I realized that the most packed part of the train is right by the door. Right where I was. I eventually got back on track and got to the right train, but it ate up an hour. The family was waiting for me at Buckingham Palace, which I guess is not the worst place to spend some extra time waiting. No signal in the underground meant I couldn't update them on my delay until I came up.

 Abbey Road zebra crossing, with studios in background

Mind the gap! Hey, even the Beatles didn't do it in one take.

 This one came out cool

These guys were trying to do it too, but I doubt their's came out as good as ours

Bella pretended to write on the wall outside Abbey Road Studios

British Library - one more for Sofia's collection

 Still smiling after 9 hours of walking around!

 South bank, 10 pm, in the rain. We're dedicated.

Before our final bus ride back to Highgate, a tube employee that helped us find our bus stop shared his pastries with us. It was a gift from God, because we were all starving and tired.

By the time we walked the south bank, it was dark, late (10:30 ish), raining, and our feet were killing us. But the walk was still beautiful. We couldn't exactly see Big Ben and Parliament from the Hungerford foot bridge like I thought (a train bridge obstructed the view...plus the rain) but that's okay.

We planned on eating a late dinner at a pub, and we were all starving by the time we got back to Highgate around midnight. To our dismay, we learned that all pubs close at 10. So the only food available was a 24-hour McDonalds. Sue said we could raid her fridge, so we made BLTs and baked beans.