Travel Diary: London, England

Dates: 13th of June – 18th of June

I am currently writing this on the Eurostar from London to Paris! I stayed in London for around five days and am staying in Paris for another five days before going to several other cities. I am excited for Paris, except for the fact that I’m nervous I don’t know the language and only know how to say, ‘Do you speak English?’

I think every tourist has to do this

Flights to London

The flight from Melbourne to London was actually miserable, as you can imagine. There were two flights: the first one was to Dubai, for 14 hours, and then to London, which was seven hours. The first flight was at five a.m. and I had no sleep the previous night, so I was already exhausted before I got on the plane. I did not really think this would be much of an issue, but it made the whole experience very tiring! I only got four to five hours sleep over two nights, and by the time we made it to London, I was so ready for sleep. Thankfully, we arrived at our hotel at nine p.m., so I went straight to sleep.

London Adventures

Day One

On the first day in London, I’d gotten a pretty good sleep, so I hardly felt jet-lagged at all! We spent the day walking around the area we were staying in, near Holborn. We first walked down Oxford Street, a popular street for shopping. I did not end up buying anything, but later that day we went to Persephone Books, a bookstore for out-of-print female authors. I bought a book called Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton.

Persephone Books

In the afternoon, we went to the British Museum. This museum is architecturally very pleasing to look at and inside there are many exhibits.

The British Museum

Day Two

For the next three days in London we got something called the ‘London Pass’, where you can get free entry into many attractions and free transport. Unfortunately, I thought the London Eye was included, but it wasn’t, so we ended up paying for it. It was cool to see a view of the city, though I doubt we would have gone if I knew we had to pay for it. Also I hate heights lol.

The London Eye

In the afternoon we went on a rock n roll walking tour because my mum likes that sort of thing. By this time, we had already walked really far, and doing this walking tour was kind of painful, but we managed. We did over 17,000 steps that day!

The Beatles had their last performance on the rooftop of this building

Day Three

This day was devoted to the palaces in London. We caught the train to Buckingham Palace. This was the first time we used the train system and, let me tell you, it’s not great! The trains are so tiny I could barely stand. Anyway, there was something going on at Buckingham Palace when we arrived, so we stayed to check it out. We waited in the crowd and were able to watch the Queen’s Guards march past. Then we went to the Royal Mews and the Queen’s Gallery.

Buckingham Palace

In the afternoon we went to Kensington Palace using the Hop On Hop Off buses. This palace was really interesting because you are allowed to walk through several of its areas. Queen Victoria had a really strange life.

Kensington Palace

Day Four

In the morning we used the bus again to go to the London Bridge Experience. I thought this would be a cool little tour of the bridge, but it turned out being a horror maze type of thing. It was scary, though I don’t find jump scares and things like that very bad. I find rollercoasters waay worse.

The London Bridge

We then went to the Tower of London! I really liked this one. I loved learning about the Royal Beasts, where many exotic animals were kept in the tower. Often, these animals caused harm to the people in the tower, most likely because the animals were treated poorly. It was very busy and the line to look at the Crown Jewels was really long, so we didn’t even bother.

The Tower of London

In the evening we saw the musical Waitress in the West End. It was a great show! The music and the set was the best part. It was also really funny.

Adelphi Theatre in West End

There are so many really beautiful ancient buildings in London. I had no idea that the city had so many old buildings, as most of them are protected from being knocked down. It is such a cozy, pretty city, and very different to Melbourne, as Melbourne mostly has modern buildings. There is so many things to do in London and we barely did any of it.

I am currently in Paris and have been for two days. This post took ages to write because the wifi at my hotel has been bad. Paris has been interesting so far, I will make a post about it soon.