The Englands go to London!

When Emily and I were trying to decide with whose family to spend Christmas, we jokingly said we should go to London.  After looking up the ticket prices, we decided it was a good idea. 

We flew over on a 747, which wasn't as cool as I hoped it would be.  Our layover in Vegas was about three hours.  When we finally boarded the plane, a dust storm rolled through which limited visibility and came with some pretty strong wind gusts.  That's not a good combo for a 747.  So we sat there for two hours before we were cleared for takeoff.  As we were accelerating down the runway, the pilot all of a sudden slammed on the brakes, which was kinda scary.  Turns out a sensor came on saying the door was open.  So we sat again, for another two hours until it was reset and we were cleared again.  So after four hours of sitting on this plane, we finally got up in the air.  It was not comfortable.  To compensate us, Virgin Atlantic offered a $10 voucher at a store in the Gatwick Airport in London.  We couldn't find this store, and the voucher was only valid that day.  So it was pretty useless. 

We got up early the next day and planned to make the rounds through central London, which was about a 20 minutes walk from our hotel. 

First stop was Westminster Abbey, which was pretty cool.  I didn't realize there were that many prominent people buried there.

Right outside from Westminster Abbey was the Houses of Parliament. Unfortunately for us, almost everything was under repair.  Big Ben was completely covered by scaffolding. So, that was kind of lame.

As we were walking around trying to figure out where we wanted to go to next, we saw some horses lined up, so we went and checked it out.  Apparently we walked through the official entrance to Buckingham Palace to get there.  It was the changing of the Queen's Lifeguard.

After that we continued down to Trafalgar Square, which was supposed to have a cool Christmas market.  We were pretty unimpressed.  We didn't see a market, and it was actually not really decorated that much at all.

Trafalgar Square is supposed to have one of the biggest Christmas trees in London, but it was pretty lame and not well lit.  I know we were there in the middle of the day, but still.

The building behind me with the dome is the same building James Bond meets Q for some gadgets in Skyfall.

We then went to the Churchill War Rooms, which is where Winston Churchill conducted a lot of operations during WWII.

After that we decided to take a boat cruise that would take us up and down the River Thames. Along the way there was a guide to point out key landmarks and cool buildings.

We got to go under all the bridges, including the London Bridge and Tower Bridge.

A lot of London was festively decorated for Christmas.  This included almost all the pubs and stores, as well as some of the government buildings. Some of them looked super tacky.

The next day we started with St. Paul's Cathedral.  We got there as soon as it opened, so we were the first to enter.  The cool thing about going during Christmas break like we did, was that we didn't have to wait in line for anything. 

Anyway, St. Paul's Cathedral was pretty cool.  The architecture, decor, and art inside was pretty amazing.  We were able to wander around the chapels and the crypt all by ourselves, no other annoying tourists.

After that we walked down to the Tower of London. This was all the mid evil stuff.  There was a torture chamber, chapel, and armory. It was crazy how big some of the cannons were. 

The Tower of London is right by the Tower Bridge, so Emily posed for a photo opportunity.

 Emily wanted to know if going into battle got the men excited, and asked why they would need their armor so shiny.

 We also got to see the Crown Jewels.  Which all looked pretty flimsy. 

After that we walked across the Tower Bridge.

We then walked through Christmas on the River, which was basically a flee market and not Christmas at all.

We hit up the Borough Market for lunch and after failing to find Emily a gyro, we got some awesome bratwursts.

We then walked on down to the Imperial War Museum.  It was a little farther of a walk than I anticipated.  It had some really cool displays of artifacts from all the wars England has been involved in starting with WWI.

Christmas Eve we took the London Underground all the way out to Camden for lunch and to explore the market there.  It was pretty cool.  All the markets seem to have a crazy amount of food stands.  It also seemed as though all the little shops had the same supplier.  

At this point our feet were killing us.  For Christmas we stayed close to the hotel. Everything in England shuts down on Christmas, but we were lucky to find a place open that had pizza.

The day after Christmas we went on a day trip bus tour thing.  The first stop was at Leed's Castle. It was pretty cool looking.

"Stop taking my picture!"  Look at that face, so adorable.

There was a Christmas tree in every room.

Next up was Canterbury, a cool little city about an hour and a half east of London. We wish we would've known what it was like before, because we would've taken transit and spent most of the day there.

We were given about 40 minutes, most of it was to go through the Cathedral, which is supposedly the oldest cathedral in England.  It was also the only cathedral that allowed us to take photos inside.

It was a very successful trip.  London was a lot more filthy with trash and whatnot than we were expecting. Also, the amount of people that smoke there is crazy.  It felt like we were constantly walking through someone's smoke cloud. 

We walked so much our legs were so sore and our feet hurt so bad. According to my FitBit we took over 70,000 steps in three days.