London Wrap-Up

by Karen

We managed to squeeze in a lot of sight-seeing during our precious little week in London (our AirBnb hostess even marveled at our “sightseeing stamina”), and yet we hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface. We’ll definitely be back!

Speaking of AirBnb, we really loved our hosts, and we considered the little amount of time we were able to spend with them to be one of the highlights of our week. Their house was a bit far from central London, but it really felt like a cozy home, and it was nice to be in a place that didn’t feel like a hotel or dorm. So if you happen to be reading this, thank you for being awesome, Bill & Philippa!

And now, a quick list of our likes & dislikes about London—

Likes:
– so much history!
– the London Underground and ease of public transportation
– the diversity of people and neighborhoods
– the markets
– free museums
– everything is within walking distance
– plethora of ethnic foods
– local television
– the “internationality” of it
– tourist-friendly maps on every street corner

Dislikes:
– everything is pretty expensive (compared to America)
– air pollution & quality is very bad (gave us black snot)

The weather was actually gorgeous while we were there, so can’t complain about that!

Ultimately we enjoyed our time in London very much, and are eager to go back again (don’t worry Edinburgh, we want to give you more love next time too). We made the (somewhat) tough decision of skipping Stonehenge, Bath, and York, simply because there was already so much to see and do in London, and we had a short amount of time. We had already crammed so much into a few days, we were starting to get exhausted by the end of the week.

We’re actually considering returning to London after Barcelona at the end of our trip, since both our UK stamps are valid for 6 months (and it would give us an opportunity to get Mark a visa for Ireland). It would be a lot more expensive to fly back from London than Barcelona, but since we’re already on this side of the pond anyways…….

Stay fresh, London! Til next time!

Traveling from London to Paris on Megabus

by Karen

There are a bunch of different ways to travel to Paris from London, the cheapest most likely being a bus. There are also many different bus companies going to Paris (probably at around the same prices), but we ended up choosing Megabus because we didn’t realize how many others there were at the time of booking (we booked our Edinburgh-London bus at the same time).

Unfortunately, London-Paris does not offer a sleeper option yet. So we had to get a regular seater bus for £18/person.

Our bus left from Victoria Coach Station at 9:30pm on time (yay!). But we had to get to the check-in line about an hour earlier. Holy crap, the station was absolute chaos. It was like someone started throwing free money around and everyone was crowding around doors.

The seats are like normal coach seats and the bus is a duplex. It’s pretty full in contrast to our Megabus from last weekend.

Cheap bus full of (predominantly young) people traveling in groups = bring earplugs if you want to sleep. (I almost feel like the older I get, the more anti-social I become.) Fortunately I was tired enough to just pass out.

Two hours into our journey, we had to get off the bus and go through passport control. Mark said that it was like going through Communion for him; everytime he gets a passport stamp, he feels “blessed”.

We got off the bus again after that to get a sandwich while waiting to board the ferry, and again after the bus parked on the ferry. The ferry feels pretty huge, it was almost like being on a cruise ship, and had a large cafeteria and small slot machines. It was about a 1.5hr ride to the French shore. Goodbye, England! Unfortunately, it was too dark to see anything outside.

Our bus arrived in Paris around 8am and dropped us off in Porte Maillot, which is supposedly a giant concert hall & shopping mall area.

Nothing special about the bus, but it was pretty darn cheap. The ferry made us really sea sick though. 😦

London – Signs and Beasts

by Mark

Brilliant things to look at in and around London. The area, compared our trips to Iceland or Scotland, has a lot more beasts incorporated into their symbols. Their text-based signs are very similar to the other countries. However, London has more of a tendency to info-cluster bomb people with mosaics of signs.

London – Food!

The best food in London isn’t from London, it’s from around the world.

Makan – Malaysian food on Portobello Rd, £5 for a plate of all this:

Kaslik – Lebanese food in Soho, £6.50 for their awesome lunch box
Kati Roll – Indian street food off of Oxford St.
Borough Market – a food market open Thurs-Sat near London Bridge.
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese – English pub hidden in an alleyway off Fleet Street. Lots of locals, lots of lawyers, and great pub food. Even if you don’t eat here, you should go downstairs and look at the building, it’s very interesting.

Mogul – Indian food in Greenwich. Oh wow, best Indian food ever.

London – Oyster Card

If you plan on staying in London for more than 2 days and want to go exploring, GET AN OYSTER CARD. It is totally worth it!

– You need to pay a £5 fully-refundable deposit.
– Any amount you put on the card and don’t use will be refunded to you when you return your card to a ticket booth.
– No expiration date.
– Can always refill the amount at kiosks in every station.
– There is a cap on how much you get charged per day, in order to avoid accidentally overpaying (how nice of them!). I believe it’s £7 for zones 1-2 (meaning, if you travel a LOT in the city in one day, you will not get charged more than a total of £7 for that day, regardless). It really helps, there have been days where we’ve used the Underground multiple times a day.

Related articles

• London Tube survival guide (matadornetwork.com)
• A simple day in London (briannaleilani.wordpress.com)
• Public Transport (nicksdrewe.wordpress.com)
• London Day 1 (grahamandandrea.wordpress.com)