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On the Airbus to the hotel, I met a girl who happened to be on the same Contiki tour I was about to join. She identified me as a fellow Contikian, since she saw me rifling through their package on the shuttle. She too was Canadian, from Toronto.

Upon arrival at the Royal National Hotel, we stored our luggage and went touring together. Our first stop was the British Museum which was everything that I had hoped it would be. Thankfully, my fellow Canadian was both patient and understanding of the hour I spent reading every caption on the Assyrian and Egyptian artifacts contained in the museum.

We bought passes to the “tube” and explored the rest of the city without any organized tour. It was a very productive day, which, unfortunately, did not include a trip to Buckingham Palace.

Our first stop was to Big Ben and the House of Parliament. Very cool to see, but not much to report on.  My trip on the London Eye did not expose great British vistas, as the skies were very gray. The norm in London I had been told. We took a break at at a cute, tourist trap eatery near the London Eye for lunch. Considering what it was, the prices were reasonable. What I found most interesting about this restaurant, was that none of the staff was British. Our waiter was actually from Quebec.

We also went to Westminster Abbey and St Margaret’s Church, an experience I did not enjoy. The Abbey is like an indoor cemetery: the floor covered with plaques commemorating the dead that lay beneath.  The statues of the deceased, iron men and iron beds, fingers pointed in the shape of pyramids towards the sky in eternal prayer, frightened me.

The weather really set the mood for this latter visit as it was fairly windy and rained off and on. When it began to hail briefly, we decided to call it a day.

Although this really didn’t happen in the same day, I am going to include the following morning’s trip to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge here, since technically, it can all be seen in one day.

While navigating through the grounds of the fortress (Tower of London), one would never imagine today that it was a royal prison and site of torture and execution. Same can be said of the Bridge that shares its name. Despite its bloody history, I still found it less frightening that Westminster Abbey, but I’m sure Anne Boleyn would beg to differ.

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