Yesterday we had a full day in London to do a lot of exploring. Paul completed his 19 mile run, and we were off without a hitch. We took the "tube" downtown to board our tour bus and begin the day full of activities. We were able to see a lot of the big London attractions including St. Paul's Cathedral, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Shakespeare's Globe, London School for Boys, Big Ben, London Eye, and a few others. We obviously didn't have time to see everything, or go inside of any of the attractions, but we had a good time observing the spectacular views from outside the landmarks and from the Thames River.
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| Tower of London, only 7 executions, all royalty, I guess we missed that boat. |
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| Streets of London, a little different from red barns in Wisconsin... |
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| St. Paul's Cathedral, the bell is much bigger than Big Ben's... the dome is really impressive! |
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| London's School for Boys, a few smart boys came out of this bad boy... |
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| The London Eye, it costs 20 pounds to ride, and each cart fits 25 people... do the math, ca-ching! |
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| Another example of a beautiful London building... |
After our long day of site seeing from the top of a bus, we were kind of "toured-out", so we walked down the street to a market store and bought a few packs of hummus (1 pound), whole grain pita bread (35 pence), some more bread from a different market, and a few beers from a small 24 hour market down the road. We set up shop outside of our fancy hotel (not to be seen by the people who go there and actually have a few pounds to their name) and indulged in our dinner of beer, bread, and hummus. We were so full from the breakfast that morning, that this snack-dinner was perfect. The beer was really reasonable and was the perfect ending to our time in London. It was fun to dodge the mainstream hotel restaurant and scrape around for some food. We were also determined to use any of the remaining coinage from our currency exchange into pounds, because you aren't able to go into US dollars from foreign coins.
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| Our dinner of beer and bread, seated far away from the bar's outdoor patio... that's us alright! |
Today we woke up early, had another amazing breakfast of fruit crepes, fresh grapefruit, kiwis, oranges, fresh cheese, bread, and strong coffee. The buffet was absolutely amazing, and probably one of the best breakfasts I've had in the states, as well as Europe. We then found our tour group and headed to the UK shore to board a ferry as a foot passenger. It was a massive ferry with cars, tour boats, and everything on board. We were trying to use our remaining 79 pence, but the only item we could find was 80, so we now have 79 pence with us for the rest of the trip, hah! The ferry ride went fast and we were able to relax and enjoy a few tough crosswords. After landing in France, we boarded our tour bus and headed from France to Belgium. We traveled through the countryside of Belgium and to the outskirts of Brussels.
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| Boarding our English Channel ferry boat! |
Unfortunately, we didn't visit a currency exchange before we left and did not have access to any European currency of any kind because it was late Saturday evening, so we were stuck with credit cards. We wanted to get to the metro and head downtown to see the Grand Plaza and the little boy sculpture who is peeing into a fountain, however, without any Euros, we were stranded. We decided to skip the optional tour, due to the expensive tour and not a great value. Instead we walked a little towards town and stopped at a nice restaurant called the Book Store. It was a real bookstore with sit down tables scattered throughout, and a bar on one end. The food was unreal, and the beer was also a nice compliment to Belgium tradition.
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| Dinner at the Book Store... ahh "I only speak English?"... |
After dinner we walked back to the hotel, and we're going to call it a night pretty soon. Tomorrow we are going to Germany and will be doing a boat cruise, it should be a long day of traveling, but I have a great book to read and I look forward to seeing the sites as we move to different countries...
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| On our way back to the hotel, last and only night in Brussels! |
Missing everyone already... but at least I have a new friend.... tea. I love tea over here, and I'm sad we're only starting to catch on... I am buying a nice tea cup and saucer set when I get home, so delicious!
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