London Adventure- Day 1!

So... I am in England right now. I have been here 8 days now and I love it! I wanted to start on my blogposts now, so that I don't get too overwhelmed with all of the pictures I've taken.

You might want to skip the next part (I'm writing it for journaling purposes). You can just skip down to the pictures.

I arrived bright and early last Friday morning. Although I had a whole middle row to myself on the plane, I didn't sleep very well. So needless to say, I was exhausted by the time the plane touched down in England.

After getting my checked in bag and going through customs, I hopped on the tube to my hotel. It was rush hour (as in it was so crowded that you do not have any personal space); I had a backpack, a rolly suitcase and a coat to carry onto the crowded tube; I was exhausted and I was trying to figure out what stop to get off at to change trains. I got a little overwhelmed.

I tried to stay near the doors, but when the doors open up on different sides depending on what station you're at, I got nervous about trying to get me and all of my stuff through all of the people if the doors opened up on the other side. I silently kept on praying, please let the doors open up on my side of the train at my stop, please let the doors open up on my side of the train at my stop. Thankfully both times I had to get off enough other people got off that I was able to get through fairly easily.

Once I got off at my stop, I thought I had looked at my map enough to know how to get to my hotel. Haha. That thought quickly left me as I walked around and saw no visible street signs and the roads were windy and a bit confusing. After a couple of wrong turns, I found a promising road and finally realized that when there actually were street names they were on the buildings.

When I finally realized this, my life became much easier. I found my hotel and left my luggage there (since I couldn't check in yet) and started walking. I knew the general direction I needed to go and I eventually found the Thames River and walked along that.

Big Ben was awesome! Pictures don't do it justice. I had seen so many pictures of Big Ben and other popular attractions of London that I thought I knew what it was like. But I should have known that pictures cannot do any place justice!

I heard that doing a walking tour of London was a good way to see the city, so I had looked up a walking tour that looked interesting and made my way to the meeting point of the tour. As I was walking to the meeting place, I saw this monument. It was in the middle of the road and dedicated to The Women of World War II.

 The London Eye!

I went on the Brunel walking tour (Brunel was a mechanical and civil engineer who designed some bridges and a few of the tunnels that the tube now runs through). The tour I went on included a boat ride on the Thames. The picture above is from the boat. (Although our tour guide was talking the whole boat ride, I'm afraid I didn't hear very much (except when I was taking pictures) because as soon as I sat down, I started nodding off because I was so tired.)

My first view of the Tower Bridge from the boat!

Our boat ride lasted about 40 minutes and then we started walking again which was good because it woke me up! I really liked this tour, because it took me to a different part of London than I ever would have gone to and I learned a lot about Brunel (even if I don't remember it now).

The picture above is our tour group. Our tour guide is the man with the pink backpack. He was good! He was very knowledgeable and was an interesting guy! 

I don't remember what the building is in the picture above, but I liked it!

When the tour was over, I asked the tour guide if it was possible to walk back to Big Ben from the end point of the tour. He said I could but it would probably take about 40 minutes, which I was totally okay with. Well it took much longer than that, but it didn't really matter because it was a beautiful walk and I got to see some amazing views of London!

 I walked across the Tower Bridge!

 It's beautiful!

 The Tower Bridge has some beautiful detail!

 The Millenium Bridge!

Look at the sky as the sun set was drawing near! (If you look closely you can see Big Ben in the picture as well as the London Eye.)

 An obelisk I found along my walk back to Big Ben!

 I believe this is Westminster's Abbey.

After over 27,000 steps that day, I finally made it back to my hotel where I stayed for the rest of the evening. I was exhausted from not sleeping that much on the plane and then walking so much that day that I fell asleep around 7:30 pm and didn't wake up until 6:00 am. 

Overall I had a glorious first day in the United Kingdom!

The picture above is the view from my hotel room the next morning!