London - Day 1

 We arrived at London Gatwick at 1:35pm (5:35am Vancouver time) on Friday afternoon. Having heard bad reviews of Air Transat flights to London, and once flying them to Las Vegas, I had very low expectations. Our flight was better than expected, however, with a good amount of personal space, individual tv terminals, and two okay meals. I watched two good movies, My Week With Marilyn, which I had wanted to see, and Chronicles, which I'd never even heard of, but was a nice surprise.

We had choices to make about how to get into the city. The Gatwick Express would get us there in 30 min, and cost £18.90 each, the regular train would take 40 min and cost £8.90 each, or Easybus for a few pounds each, but would have to battle traffic into the city. It seemed like an easy choice, so we took the regular train to Victoria station. Half way into town, I realized we had chosen to sit in first class, but since no one was coming around to check, I decided to pretend I'd still not noticed the sign.

I noticed a little note about the Covent Gardens stop, saying it could get very busy and a better stop might be the one before it, but I discounted it since my walking directions were from the CG stop. We got off the tube and walked up the hall to find a huge line of people waiting to get in elevators. This station was too far down for an escalator, I guess. It was so hot and claustrophobic waiting in there with all those people, and we noticed a few leaving the line to walk up the stairs. Cairo and Harold thought we should follow them and I was pretty surprised, since there was a sign right there that said it was 193 steps up. I was rather impressed actually, that Cairo would choose to walk up all those stairs with a heavy backpack on her back, so I was all gung ho. Let's go then!

Half way up, I learned Cairo had not seen the sign, she'd had no idea how many steps it was, but to give her credit, she didn't complain (not much anyway), and just kept going, passing many others who weren't laden down like pack mules. We made a mental note to try not to use this station again, if at all possible.

Covent Gardens is a great area, with a lot of narrow lanes filled with pubs, restaurants, shops, and theatres. Cairo was in awe of all the retro dress shops we walked past on our way to the hotel. Seven Dials Hotel on Monmouth Street had been fully booked when I contacted them, but had an annex location two blocks over on Endell Street, with family size rooms. While it's very easy to find hotels in North America that will fit more than a couple, Europe is not as easy, especially the big cities. It was the priciest stay of our trip, but the location just couldn't be beat.

View from our room

We found the nondescript white door sandwiched in between a travel agent and a retro dress store that pulled at Cairo's heartstrings. Across the road is a 24 hour store, and on the corner is the location for what we were told, by the hotelier, is the best fish & chips in London. Climbing up the narrow stairway to the second floor, we found the lights were all motion censored and came on as we approached. We would find this to be the norm in many of our hotels in Europe. They also have switches on the plugs, so you can shut off the actual receptacle, and two button toilet flushers, so you have a choice of how much water is used. Even the lower level flush appears to use a lot more water than our newer systems though.

We had one double bed, two singles, a couch, armoire, desk, and book shelf. This was a very good size room, but the bathroom was tiny to the point of being restrictive and claustrophobic. The weather was warm and sunny, and our room didn't have a/c, but with the 3 large windows open, it let in lots of fresh air, and the room cooled off nicely. While the main hotel included free Wifi, it was not available in the annex building but I was able to connect to a paid Wifi service that was available in that area for £15 for the week.


We'd not only been told Rock & Sole Plaice, the fish & chips shop on the corner, was the best in London, they had it pasted all over the building and it was bustling with people, inside and out. We opted for a table out front, so we could enjoy the weather and watch the people going by. Food prices were quite expensive, but the wine was cheap. We shared a bottle of red house wine, which was tasty, and had two orders of fish & chips between the 3 of us. Like most fish shops in Vancouver, the portions are always way too big, and even sharing, we had too much food. The batter on the fish was very tasty and nicely done, the chips (English french fries are always called chips. Potato chips are called Crisps.) were thick cut and perfectly fried, but the fish (haddock and cod) was just not as nice as we have here at home.

Smokers outside Pub

After dinner, we went wandering around the area, past theatres playing big and small shows, and restaurants and pubs brimming with people. From down the road at the restaurant, we had noticed what we thought was a line of people waiting to get into a club or theatre. As we got closer we realized it was a pub they were standing outside, and all the people were out there smoking and drinking. There doesn't appear to be much of any rules against people drinking out on the sidewalk like there is at home. There is a rule against smoking inside however.

London Eye capsule

A few blocks down we came out on the Thames, just a bit over from the London Eye. I had read online that queues for the huge Ferris wheel can get up to 2 hours in the summer, but didn't want to pay extra for the fast pass until I had seen for myself it was worth the extra cost. The company who runs the London Eye, also runs Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, and another tourist trap, The London Dungeon. They offer better prices if you pay for more than one place.

Partiers we caught from the London Eye

Cairo had really wanted to go to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum on this trip. All her life, when we have gone to tourist traps, she's asked to go in the wax museum there, and I always told her the only one worth seeing was the London Tussaud's. But I went there as a child and didn't want to spend the money to go again, and Harold had no interest. We had thought to let Cairo go alone, but she didn't like that idea. We compromised on all going to The London Dungeon instead, even though Harold and I were rolling our eyes about it. We bought the combo ticket and figured we'd fit the Dungeon in another day.











Lucky for us, the weather was beautiful, and the line was short, so we jumped on it right away and were rewarded with a wonderful aerial view of the entire city. I had wondered if the heights would bother me, but I didn't find it at all scary. Just a nice, smooth, slow ride up and around, and back down again. There was a 4D experience ride that was included with our ride, but we found it to be kinda ho-hum.

The waterfront walk was full of entertainers, skateboarders and people paying to have their pictures taken with people in costumes, some very imaginative, while others the same old metallic men and other characters we've seen in many other cities. We wandered around for a while, before walking back across the river on one of the Golden Jubilee pedestrian bridges that flank the Hungerford Bridge. I was quite surprised that Harold and Cairo didn't share my excitement that this was the very same bridge that Bridget Jones had walked across in her first movie.


Up the road we came across Trafalgar Square. One of my fondest memories when I was a kid in London, was coming here and feeding the pigeons. They would land all over your hands, arms, and head, in their quest for the food you offered them. In 2003, feeding them was made illegal. I can definitely understand why, they make a terrible mess of the area, but it's still sad. The square was all cordoned off, in preparation for the concert taking place there on Sunday, the Gay Pride Festival, something we were mulling over attending.


We ended up back at our room about 9pm, and fell asleep as soon as our heads hit their respective pillows.