Day two in London started out better than the first. We both felt rested and ready to take on the day. The different thing about our hotels was the fact that we had to pay for breakfast. When we travel in the US, we always choose hotels that include breakfast because I am a breakfast eater.
Not to worry...we paid for the convenience of breakfast in our hotel. There was someone there to seat us, bring Tyler coffee, and make sure we had everything we needed. It was a traditional English breakfast which meant bread, beans, eggs, bacon (which tasted similar to ham in the US), mushrooms, and some other foods including fruit, cereal, and muffins.
We stayed at The Shaftesbury Metropolis at London Hyde Park. It was very close to the Paddington tube and bus station, and the walk to and from the station was beautiful.
Since we purchased our room with credit card points, we did get the cheapest available, which was also the smallest. We also have a mentality when traveling that we don't need anything fancy. We had come to see and do all the things, so we really only needed a bed and a shower. That's exactly what we got.
Have you ever been on a cruise? The interior room on a cruise ship is larger than this room here in London. Tyler and I were cracking up. Below, you can see the handle to the bathroom door in the lower right corner of the picture. The door couldn't open up all the way...it hit the bed. So each time we had to shimmy our way into the bathroom.
I am standing at the door of the bathroom and trying to take a picture inside. The potty is to the right in this picture. The entire bathroom was the size of a closet. We simply just laughed at the whole predicament. We knew things would be smaller, but it was just hysterical to us. The shower door also didn't close all the way, so I had to hold it closed with my elbow...which was easy when I washed my hair because my elbows touched from wall to shower door.
That morning, we got up and headed over to St. Paul's Cathedral. Since we had the London Pass, we got right in. We grabbed our audio guide and started following it through the cathedral. Rick Steves had given us an estimated time of two hours that it would take for us to get through the entire cathedral. However, we both loved it so much, we spent closer to 3 1/2 hours there.
There were a lot of people taking photos inside, so I got a little braver and took some myself.
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| Looking in toward where the Choir sits. |
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| The ceilings were beautiful. |
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| Looking back toward the Nave. |
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| Looking towards the Nave on the other side...notice the Star Wars looking decoration. :) |
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| The roped off area was directly under the dome. |
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| The Dome. We climbed up to the level right under those statues. |
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| We climbed up even higher to walk around the outside at the top. This was our first look at the city of London. |
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| The Shard is in the distance. |
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| It was fun to recognize things such as the Shard and Millenium Bridge (the pedestrian bridge) that I had been reading about for months. |
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| We sat many times to take in the beautiful cathedral. |
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| As we left, we took in the outside views of St. Paul's Cathedral. |
Part of our London Pass was a double-decker hop on-hop off bus tour. This meant we could hop on where we wanted and hop off when we saw something we wanted to check out. We hopped on right outside of St. Paul's Cathedral and headed over towards the Tower of London.
The thing about riding the bus versus the tube is that we had to deal with all the London traffic. It was horrible. A 13-minute ride on the tube ended up being more like a 45-minute ride on the bus. All-in-all, if you have time to spare, yes! Ride the bus. But we were pressed for time, trying to squeeze in all the things we wanted to do in just a couple days on our London Pass.
We did make it to the Tower of London, though. It was kinda funny...Tyler had done none of the planning, so he was expecting to see an actual tower. But it was more like a fortress. We had close to 2 hours to see everything when Rick Steves had estimated about 3 hours. We went straight to the building that held the crown jewels. While it was very cool to see, I wasn't that impressed.
I might add that I don't quite understand the infatuation with the Royals, so that probably had something to do with it. Yes! It was neat to see, but I don't know much about them or the country's history.
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| From inside the tower, we had a view of the Shard. |
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| This building houses all of the Crown Jewels. However, there are more gold dishes in here than actual tiaras. Also note, we did visit the day of the Royal Wedding. Some things were being used, but not a lot. |
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| We also had a great view of the Tower Bridge (not to be confused with London Bridge). |
Other sights that we took in that day were:
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| Borough Market |
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| Shakespeare's Globe |
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| The Millenium Bridge headed towards St. Paul's Cathedral. |
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| The streets of Notting Hill |
We made our way all around the city that day, and by the time we got back to our hotel, we were so tired. It was safe to say that we crashed hard that night!
Other Posts in this Series:
London #1
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