London is big, busy, and buzzy.
Everyone is in a hurry and there’s all kind of traps for new kids on the block…and we loved it!
The musty, stuffy, smelly, noisy, hot-air-huffy queues and bustle of the tube, the impatient joggers around all the tourist hotspots (seriously, you can’t get grumpy about dawdling tourists if your plot your course past the gates of Buckingham Palace), the mountains of plastic-bagged rubbish on the edges of the footpaths (doesn’t anyone remember the plague?) and the history…
Seriously…the history!
Our apartment for the week was by London Bridge in the shadow of The Shard; we had no trouble find our way home each evening
We tried to balance our experiences between the conventional
And the fanatical.
and finished our visit on a high: Chelsea beating Watford 4-2 while The Farmer was in the stands
marking off all the tube lines for the The Bean Counter’s Underground Bingo,
a ladies only high-stepping, foot tapping, sequin dazzling visit to Covent Gardens
and the London Eye for Tony.
London, you rock. Despite never feeling 100% clean, constantly standing in someone else’s way, and nursing perpetually sore feet and legs (stairs and more stairs and yet more stairs) we miss you already.
Union Homestead 
You certainly made the most of your time in London, sorry about the rubbish though, people just don’t care what they throw down. I am always picking things up that can be recycled!
At the point of writing this we were shocked by the piles of rubbish bags on the footpaths…and then we crossed the Channel…:)
Hi, I wonder how surreal it is when you are viewing the iconic landmarks? What it is like to be in the postcard not just looking at it? Perhaps there were some Dr. Who moments?
Some landmarks are more surreal to visit than others. Shakespeares Globe and walking over the Millenium Bridge we “pinch me” type moments for me. As for Dr Who moments, we arrived and walked out of the Tube Station as London was receiving the side effects of a Sahara sandstorm, Storm Ophelia and the Portuguese fires; the sky was purple-grey with some bright white clouds streaking it. We would not have been surprised to see the TARDIS spiralling through it all!
Cities can’t be beat for excitement and pizzazz. I feel the same way whenever I go to New York City.
New York City…sigh…also on the Homestead bucketlist 🙂
It’s the city of cities. To me, it even has a jazzy beat I can feel. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum!
Looks like you really packed a ton into a short time – there is just so MUCH in London. Chelsea and Man U in the same household? How is there no bloodshed?
I mean LIVERPOOL, not MU!! how could I make such a mistake 🙂
It’s okay…I didn’t tell The Bean Counter about your slip. Mostly the two factions exist side by side quite happily. On weekends where the teams are facing each other, we caught in the middle keep our heads down 🙂
I suppose someone has to support Chelsea though I can’t quite see why. I too apologise for the dirt in the city of my birth. It is disgraceful.
The Bean Counter also struggles to see the appeal of “the blue team” 🙂 London seemed pretty much on a par with the other large cities we visited in Europe when it came to rubbish. I guess it comes down to what you consider “normal” and piles of rubbish bags seems to be run-of-the-mill there.
Canadians always find the US somewhat dirtier than home also. I’m not quite sure why there is a difference, but there certainly is. One big difference between Europe and home for us was the amount of graffiti – except in big urban areas like Toronto and Vancouver, graffiti is not really condoned here, but in Europe, not only is there more of it, but it seems to be more or less tolerated.
And a lot of it is saying scary stuff too…at least in the eyes of our little band of kiwi travellers
London is much messier than it used to be. I rarely visit it these days and am shocked by the heaps of detritus just as you were. It is still an exciting place to be but soooo exhausting! Lovely photos!
We loved it there despite the mess and the grumpy joggers