Tower of London, August 23, 2007

It's a raining day, our destination, Tower of London. It rained really hard when we got there, the guided tour by the Yeoman Warder had to be done in the chapel, so it's not really a tour, more like a brief about the tower, but he was very entertaining, And May took a picture with him. We spent almost all day there cause it's the epic center of all things May are interested in - British History. The crown jewels room is actually a vault cause it houses the real thing there, so I bet the security is extremely high there. But we can't really tell. Then we also took some pictures at the tower bridge. Along with Big Ben, they are on evey post card, so I made sure to take a few shots too.

One thing to note about the entrance fee to the Tower, for a family of 4, and you plan to visit at least couple palaces managed by Historical Royal Palaces, then you would almost for sure better off buy a family membership, the total price is a few pounds less then you buy family tickets in each palace. Also you will get some nice books as gift. Ate at a Japanese noodle place right outside the tower, the noodle is terrible. Don't go there!


Since we finished dinner early, and given the efficiency of the Tube, we thought we'd check out the theater district, maybe if we lucky, we maybe able to get into a show just in time. Checked out a few ticketing service counter in Covent Garden, none of them had any ticket to the show we were interested, so we decided to just check out this vibrant area. As we were wandering around, this guy from a booth called me and said last minutes deal to the Lion King, take your family of 4 to a great show! So I went check it out, time is 7:20pm, 10 minutes to the showtime. He said, no problem, if you do it now, you will be in the show right on time. OK, let's do it, as we started running, I started to think we might have made a mistake cause we didn't even have a map, and I had big problem understanding the direction he was giving me. So we were running around for a while, asking for help several time, including London cop, finally, we found the theater at 7:40. Luckily, the show had not started yet, but the cheap seats were way up there so we had to climb at least 5 stories to get there. As soon as we sit down, the lights dimmed! And I started to fade into my hibernating mode. As it turned out, that ticket agency only gave us like 3 pounds discount pm each ticket, he was lucky to find me to take that in the last minutes! The real better deal is in the real discount ticket center on the Leicester Square, as we get our Phantom ticket there next morning.

Arrived at London, August 22, 2007

We took Delta Air from Seattle to Atlanta, then arrived at Gatwick Airport, London in the morning. Totally fly time is about 14 hours. Then we took Gatwick Express to Victoria station. It's a 30 minutes non-stop train which departs every 15 minutes from the airport. you can hop on the first one you see in the airport even without the ticket, and buy it later on the train with the same price. The ride was very smooth, plenty of space for luggages. Our hotel, Holiday Inn Express is supposed to be around the Victoria Station. But soon we realized there are many exits in the station, and we had no idea which one to take. Anyway, it took a while for use to finally find the street our hotel is on, then we pulled our 3 luggages on the street and started walk to our hotel.

It's about a 10 minutes walk from the station, not too bad, and along the way, we saw many people were hauling their luggages on the street too, so we didn't feel too embarrassed. The hotel is on Belgrave, which you will find a whole bunch of cheap hotel such as ours and Days Inn, Comfort Inn, and lots of Hostels type. I said it's cheap only in London's standard, cause we are still paying 130 pounds a night, which is more then $260, enough to stay in a Westin if we are in the States. But when we got to the hotel, man, I can't say how disappointed we are, the room is tiny and almost no furnishing at all. There is one chair but no table. I guessed there supposed to have a sofa, but it was converted to a bed so it can accommodate 4 of us. The bath room has a shower and a sink, I can't even find space to place all our toilette stuff. Anyway, this room is at best about the same or even worse then a Motel 6 room, but we are paying a lot of money for it. The main reason we chose it was it is one of the very few hotel that allows 4 persons in a room in London. Most of the London hotel allows up to 3 in a room only. Anyway, we got our first taste of how expensive London living cost is.

Since the hotel room has no any amenity for us to enjoy, after a short break, we decided to venture out. We were all hungry, so we thought we will eat first. We went into the first fish and chip we saw near the hotel. The fish is fried differently then you typically see in a US seafood place. the piece is much bigger then I have ever seen. It's quite fish, but the batter has not much flavor in it, and the fries are definitely not very good.

Anyway, after the quick bite, we were back into the Victoria station, this time, at the Underground (or the Tube, as it is also called). London Underground is as busy as (or maybe more busy) then the surface street. A network of subway pretty much takes you to anyplace you want to go in downtown London. In the next few days, we came to realize how efficient it is and how dependent we are on it. We bought a 3 days pass, it's free for little kid like Megan, and there is always a guy in the gate to open the gate for us cause Megan had no ticket to go thru the automatic gate.

We took the City line to go to Westminister stop. As soon as we got out of the station, we saw Big Ben, wow, that was pretty cool! You see that in the picture all the time, and when you see it for real, it gets you very excited. Took a few pictures, but you can't really go in there, so we went on to the Westminister Abbey. When you are in the Abbey, you just followed the map to visit all the famous tomb. Some famous ones we saw included Elizebeth I, Bloody Mary, Mary Queen of Scots, Newton, Darwin,, etc. Very interesting, especially this is one of the highlight int he Da Vinci Code, so we were especially interested in the Netwon's stone with the orb. After the Abbey, we walked along the Thames river, across a bridge to the other side to have a better view of the Big bend and Parliment building.




After Westminister, we went on the Piccadaly Circus. When we got there, we realized London stores closed really early, like around 6 or 7. We thought we were going to check out a department store, but since it is closed already, we just wandered around ths street, and then we saw that world famous neon light square. Although stores are closed, streets are still packed with people, I guess they are all goinf into pubs to unwind, a lot of people actually stood outside the bar to drink, I think that's London's pub culture. We ate a Japanese restaurant cause we can't seem to find a suitable place for family dining. And we didn't want to eat at a Pizza Hut on the corner.