06/14/2006, 05:25 AM
So we left Germany around 11pm Sunday night. We were going to leave around midnight but go to anxious and couldn't wait any longer. The way we drove we went thru Belgium and France to get to England. We had to take a ferry across the English channel. That made me nervous cause I'm not a big fan of water that i cant see the bottom of. But once we "Set Sail" i calmed down. The ferry ride took about 2 hours. During that time we wondered around the ship and its various shops. Even sat down in the front deck café and dozed off.
Coming off the ferry was an experience. We had to go straight to driving on the left side of the road. That was very weird. But we adjusted pretty easily. Most of the drive was highway driving where there is no possible way to get mixed up on what side u drive on.
Being able to listen to English radio was great. Its been such a long time and it was kind of a treat. Of course all they were talking about was the FIFA world cup games in Frankfurt Germany. LOL
Now once we got into central London, we were so glad that we had that navigation system. There was no way in hell that we ever could have found our hotel by ourselves. It also didn't help that we didn't have the addy of it. We had the addy for a different hotel with the same name, so we had to go to a net café to get the right one. There is where we first experienced the English money system. Once again, their money is a lot cooler looking that the dollar.
So once we found our hotel we got our very small room. It was sooooo warm in the room that we instantly decided we were going to have to buy a fan for the room. There was no way to survive without one. But first, we wanted to go exploring and shopping.
Our first day here was def. the hottest one. And of course its the day we decided to walk across half of London. LOL. We wanted to go explore the shops on oxford street where they say it has the best deals in the shops. And they weren't all the wrong. There were some great deals. The first day i bought a couple of shirts, a purse, a few other things. The purse was a great deal because i was able to haggle off a couple pounds from the price. It also came in handy for carry things around. After about 4 hours of shopping and some burnt shoulders, we decided to call it an early night. We took a taxi because we had to be able to say we rode in one. Wasn't that different from a normal taxi, except it drove on the left side of the road. We went to an Irish pub and ate some dinner and then turned in early because we knew we had an early day and we had been up for over 24 hours. The moment we hit the bed we were out.
Our second day started off with a home cooked English breakfast which consists of bacon or sausage, eggs and baked beans ( my fav. part of the meal). Then we headed off to navigate ourselves to meet up with a hop on hop off bus tour. We decided this time it was better to take a double decker bus to the tour for 2 reasons. One so we could say that we rode on the top of one, and two because we didn't want to do the long walk again on another hot day. It was a wise choice. The walk would have been horrible.
The bus tour was the best decision we made. It took us everywhere and we could get off and on whenever we wanted. We took tons of pics and got to see some great places such as big ben, the palace, Westminster Abbey, the London tower and the London eye. Of course being on top of the bus i got sun burnt even more. Half way thru the day it started to rain in London. Big surprise right? Well luckily the tour had ponchos for the riders so we could still ride up top and keep pretty dry. What a long day it was, but it was sooooo much fun. One big thing that sticks out is that while we were by the parliament building, we were stopped at a red light, and all of a sudden a bunch of police stopped the traffic. We knew someone big was coming out of parliament. We were hoping it was the queen but it wasn't. We are pretty sure it was Tony Blair. It was so cool.
One bad thing about England though is that they no longer have the guards that you can walk up to at the castle anymore. Not sure why but that was a bit of a disappointment. I wanted a picture of one. We also weren't able to go and see the changing of the guards or stone hedge. But hey, that just means that we will have to come back some day. Right?
The eve of night two we decided to walk around the shops some more and buy some more clothing. I was able to get a bunch of shirts for work, each only 5 pounds, what a deal. Then we took the bus home after we bought some Chinese and went to sleep.
This morning we had to get a semi early start so we could get some breakfast in us for the long drive home. We have to be at our ferry at 630 pm so we have to start out soon. Hopefully i will be able to get some pictures on here with in a few days so you can see what a wonderful trip it was. I miss you all and cant wait to be back in Germany, strange i know but i miss home and my cats and my fiancée. Well as the English say, CHEERS!
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