London

For our first real weekend in the UK, we decided to tourist it up and hit nearly every touristy spot in Central London in a single walking trip on Saturday.  We ordered first class train tickets from Derby into London for dirt cheap by buying online on Friday, and then spent some time that night laying out all of the spots we wanted to hit.  and the good news is, we didn't get lost once!

Here are the pertinent stats from Saturday's trip:

• 7:00 AM departure from Derby Station
• ~10 hours touring Central London
• 12.5 miles covered on foot (plus 3 mile round-trip walk to/from the Derby station)
• 9:30 PM return to Derby Station
• 4 incredibly tired feet

and here are the major attractions we visited

• Buckingham Palace

• St James Park (plus the start of some kind of Guard parade)

 

The Squirrel is telling us to keep-out!  Can you see him there on the gate?

• Big Ben / Westminster Abbey / House of Parliament

• London Dungeon
• London Bridge

• Tower of London

• Random wandering through the theater district

Enron, The Musical

• Random wandering around shops in Covent Gardens

 Josh works for Rolls Royce, that's why this is funny :)

• Trafalgar Square

There was a festival going on in the square while we were there...

• National Gallery (art Gallery)
• Random wandering around shops in Soho and Oxford Street

The Waldorf Hotel

 

• Hamleys toy store
• Chinatown

• Madame Tussaud's (the only attraction we actually waited in line and paid to go into)

• Hyde Park 

--We're going to go back and spend more time in Hyde park...saw some beautiful flowers as we were walking along the outskirts of the park

• Harrods Kensington Store (which is SO ridiculously big I still can't believe it...definitely coming back here....)

...and some English Countryside on the train ride home

 

So now that we've gotten that out of our system, next time we can go do whatever we want in London and not feel bad about missing the big attractions (or their enormous crowds of slow-moving people).


Next up....Nottingham....It's only 20 minutes away...some neat stuff there.  we may go over there several evenings in a row, or go over the weekend, not sure yet.  still trying to make trip-planning decisions!