Day 2 in London.
Woke up and had a little breakfast, provided by the hostel (I avoided the massive tub of weirdly smelling peanut butter), and then hit the road to see as much of the rest of London as we could before catching our bus that evening.
The weather was so much nicer than it was the previous day, not a cloud in the sky.
We passed by Ben again, and I took a few more photos of him since it was prettier out and the sun was shining.
It seemed that we always passed him right when he was chiming. It was a really neat thing to hear actually.
We continued walking around the parliament building until we came upon Westminster Abbey.
It was so beautiful.
We sat around on the back side of it on some benches for a bit to rest, (I'm telling you, walking so much is tiring) and I walked around and took pictures with my various cameras (I only brought 3! Which was really good considering).
We headed to the front after a bit and when we noticed that the price to get in was £16 we decided to just stay there.
We were poor college students back packing after all!
Not to mention the line was an hour wait so we quickly nixed that idea.
Instead we wandered down the road a little into similarly named: Westminster Cathedral.
That was gorgeous.
I really wish we had some cathedrals or older churches here in Richmond. The peace and reverence you feel walking into one of them is so humbling. It'd be nice to be able to go and sit and just journal or spend some quiet time just sitting and thinking in one.
After that we had to go to the bus station to sort out some mess with our open ended tickets, and that took way longer than it needed to, but finally when it was over we stopped for some lunch at The Shakespeare.
I had a simple mustard and ham sandwich. Lesson learned: When the menu reads "mustard and ham sandwich" that's exactly what it means. Nothing else.
It was pretty good though. I'd been missing mustard (is that a weird thing to miss?)
And the chips were good as always.
After lunch we headed back (passing by Ben again. Adam threatened to promptly leave anyone who dared take another picture of him. I took one anyways) towards the Thames, (which I learned is pronounced "Temz". Again, thanks Jenn!) and started a nice walk along the opposite side.
We passed by The London Eye, which we had seen yesterday, but not this up close. It was bigger than it looked from across the river that's for sure. If it hadn't cost so much it might've been neat to go up in it. But again, our money wasn't endless and neither was our time.
We passed a lot of people in various costumes (never seen such a sketchy looking Mickey and Minnie in my life) and street performers and such. It was all pretty touristy and we didn't linger very long.
We came across a really neat skate park though, that had layers and layers of various spray painted murals and pictures on the pillars and walls, it was really cool.
There were also several tables of books under one bridge that were fun to go through (see above).
Our main goal in walking along the river was to see The London Tower Bridge. However as we kept walking and walking we realized we were running out of time before our bus had to leave and we weren't going to make it.
So we had to settle with walking across London Bridge and seeing it from there.
We were still pretty far away but we at least got to see it.
We stopped for a few minutes to take a few photos and rest and then we had to head back.
The journey back was... let's just say unpleasant.
Walking 4 miles at a fast walk, with feet and backs that already hurt, was not fun to say the least.
I won't go into detail, but we almost missed our bus so it was pretty stressful!
Thankfully we made it though and I had never been so happy to sit down.
Which quickly changed when my seat mate on the bus decided to talk on his phone for the next 5 hours... But oh well.
We made it back around midnight and it was really good to be home.
We calculated the next morning how much we walked over the two days and it was about 15 miles.
London, you were fun to visit.
Thanks for some good memories, some good food and good times with some good friends.
Cheers!