LONDON: Days one and two

The first day was LONG, but good. We arrived in London, then took a train and taxi to our hostel to store our stuff, then went out walking. We found a little place to get some breakfast. I had no idea what it was that I ordered, and I still don't know. It was some sort of fruit coffee-cakey type thing. Decent, though.

After that, we started walking around, we started out aiming to catch the Changing of the Guards, but we got horribly lost, walking in the wrong direction. We tried to follow the way that the taxis took, and thought we were recognizing things, but turns out it was just a lot of the same places. Cafe Nerro is like the Starbucks of London. There's also some places called Pret and Eat. that are everywhere.

Once we got back on track, it was too late for that, but we walked through Trafalgar Square, then on down to Buckingham Palace and some of the gardens around there. Apparently it costs money to sit in the lawn chairs there.. and we met some guy that was absolutely not amused that we interrupted his breakfast and sat with him.

Later in the afternoon, we checked in to the hostel and showered, it felt really nice to be able to clean, even if we still didn't have sleep at this point.

We ate at a Punjabi restaurant for dinner, which was pretty good, I had some sort of pumpkin dish. Tasty.

Our hostel was advertising some bar crawl, so we decided to go, but got lost again trying to find the bar. We did eventually find it, just barely before they left for the next one. It was a little ridiculous, they gave us free "shots," which really just tasted like cough syrup. We met some people from Brazil and a couple other places, though.

Then, finally, SLEEP.

The second day, we got going a little later in the day, after breakfast in the hostel. We took a bus out to the London Bridge, and spend most of the afternoon walking around London Bridge, then over to Tower Bridge and the London Tower. There were lots of neat little places by the river, and we went back for Fish 'n' Chips for a late lunch. Andrew and I split an order of fish 'n' chips and an order of sausage and mash just to get all our bland British food in at once. Huy asked the waiter for hot sauce, who replied, "What's hot sauce?" He was not amused.

After eating, we took a boat over to Big Ben and Parliament and Westmister Abbey, then a double decker bus back to the hostel.

Andrew and I checked out a little bit of the British Museum before it closed. Walking in was amazing, I loved the big open central area with the glass roof, it was gorgeous. We saw a little bit of the Egyptian stuff, and saw some stuff about Roman-style paintings on mummies, which I really haven't learned anything about before.

Not sure what the plan is for tonight, but maybe snacky dinner from the grocery store? Two more days in London, then heading to Paris.