I think the best way to do this is to sum up each city that we visit or a certain chunk of the journey. Our first stop has been London and it has been full on! We’ve averaged about 20,000 steps a day and have come home each day feeling pretty sore from all the walking!
Day One
Since I’ve been to London before, I mapped out all the things that I thought might be of interest to Miriam. There’s a lot going on in London, and we’ve only really had 3 days to see it all!
Still being jet lagged meant it wasn’t too hard to get up early. Sam & Lydia provided coffee and toast which we were extremely grateful for and then we were on the tube in rush hour and heading into London. Londoners are kind of like “what’s covid?” so if we end up with covid again, I’m not going to be surprised.
We jumped off the tube at Oxford Circus and when we popped up, Miriam was stoked to see lines of old buildings. Now that we were in the real life Monopoly board, we headed down Regent Street towards Piccadilly Circus. Of course we snapped a quick photo of New Zealand House on the way.
The giant LED wall at Piccadilly Circus is pretty insane. I love a bit of technology like that. I’m sure it’s not as big and impressive as what they’ve got going on at Times Square, NY, but it’s still pretty cool. So we checked out the statue and moved on to Trafalgar Square.
There is a Pride concert happening at Trafalgar Square over the weekend so most of it was fenced off. You could see Nelson’s Column, but you couldn’t really get up to the lions for a good selfie. We had a bit of rain here so we sat under a tree and had a bit of a relax before moving on. It was only about 9:30am by this point!
We next decided that we should grab some food to have ready for lunch and we had our first experience of the Tesco Meal Deal. For only £3, you get a drink, a snack and a main! It’s such a bargain and there is so much to choose from. Shout out to Jordan & Tristin for telling us about this one! It’s now the staple UK lunch for us.
The rain was pretty on/off at this point but we walked down The Mall towards Buckingham Palace. As we approached I said to Miriam “look! It’s Buckingham Palace!” She was excited to actually see this famous building in person and said “this is the second time I’ve almost cried today” – I think the first was probably coming out of the tube at Oxford Street.
Sadly the changing of the guard was cancelled due to the weather so after hanging out with the crowds for a little bit, we walked over to Westminster Abbey to find a quiet spot for lunch. Turns out there are no quiet spots so we at lunch in the middle of what felt like a roundabout. Big Ben has recently been uncovered from its years worth of renovations and it was looking very shiny!
After lunch we went into Westminster Abbey. This is the church where kings and queens have had their coronations and weddings for 1000 years. It was extremely busy, and once inside you’re shuffled through a one-way path around the building. It’s pretty crazy how many memorials are in there. It seems like at a time everyone wanted to be buried there or memorialised there.
The highlight for me was probably Henry VII chapel. A king who arguably had no right to the throne commissioned a very grand extension and had himself and his wife buried right in the middle of it.
After the Abbey, we headed over the always busy Westminster Bridge to get the view of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben from the other side. We were very lucky that all of the scaffolding had been removed from these buildings. They’ve been doing major renovations for a very long time!
Once over the bridge we headed east along South Bank. It’s such a busy area with so much going on! So many food trucks, markets, and people!
We made a quick visit to the Doggets Pub on the way past to check out the photo of my Uncle Dave who won the Doggets Coat and Badge race one year. I had been part of preparing the photo to be sent to England for its display in this pub so it was cool to see it still hanging there!
By this point in the day we were feeling pretty tired but we wanted to go and check out Tate Modern. I don’t have much to say about contemporary art so I won’t go into detail here.
That pretty much wrapped up day one in London! We headed over Millennium Bridge and got the tube home during rush hour and felt exhausted!
Day Two
At this point you might have realised this is going to be long!
Day two we started where we finished the day before by getting the tube to St Paul’s. Our first stop was St Paul’s cathedral and I was excited to go in there again.
St Paul’s is stunning. The main building of the church on the inside walls is fairly plain, but the details in the ceiling are incredible. So much gold and so many biblical depictions. Miriam and I both stood in awe of the work on the ceilings.
I reckon the best part about St Paul’s is that you can walk to the top for one of the best views in London! It’s about 500-and-something steps through the less glamorous, back alleys of the church and when you get to the first viewing platform you realise it’s worth it. But then you get back in the stairs and head right up to the top for a very narrow walkway around the spire and you wonder why you bothered taking photos further down! It’s just incredible.
The walk back down gives you shaky legs and I felt like I had just completed a climb on the first day of a Great Walk. These attractions are hopefully making us fit!
From St Paul’s we walked back along Millennium Bridge to finish the walk along South Bank to Tower Bridge. There were a few alleyways that caught our attention – it’s just so cool being in the middle of so many different stages of history.
We did the usual tourist thing and took a million photos with Tower Bridge in the background and then we walked across it towards the Tower of London.
I’ve been to the Tower before, so of course I knew exactly where the entrance was so suggested the quickest route to it. When we got there, it was fenced off and a security guard told us it was a bit further round. So we kept walking and eventually we ended up right next to Tower Bridge and we had walked all the way around the Tower of London to get to the entrance. Turns out in the past 7 years they’ve moved it. Cool cool cool.
Today was the day that the entirety of the US had decided to go to the Tower along with every primary school in London. It was packed. We headed first for the Crown Jewels because we figured we might as well get the queuing out of the way.
There’s not really a way to describe the Crown Jewels other than they’re shiny, sparkly, and (ex)spensive (the three ‘S’s of jewels). Most of them originate from the 1600s when they had just abolished the monarchy and destroyed the original Crown Jewels and then realise that there was actually another person in line for the throne. Strange history.
The Tower is huge and is pretty much a collection of museums about various different things so I won’t go into all of it. The most fascinating thing about it is that the White Tower in the middle (the one that you can see from many places in London) has actually been a tourist attraction since about 1500. It blows my mind the amount of people who must have walked through there and experienced history like we did. Plus, during a lot of those early years there would have been actual prisoners in other parts of the Tower who had likely committed treason against the king! Imagine going to a museum and knowing there were prisoners locked up in the next room!
The rest of the day was fairly relaxing. We spent about an hour sitting in the St Dunstan in the East Church Garden which is a church that was bombed in the Second World War but never rebuilt. It’s a stunning place and was good to relax in a quiet part of a busy city.
Our evening was spent with Lydia and Lauren at a pizza bar out east. Was great to catch up and eat yum food!
Day Three
It was time for a day in London where we didn’t pack out every minute, but we actually ended up doing more steps than the others! We started the day at the Museum of London Docklands which is a great little free museum that gives you some good background into the history of trade in London.
After the museum we got back on the DLR and headed for Cutty Sark. The first stop along the line was Canary Wharf and what we didn’t realised was that this was the end of line station! We sat there for about 5 minutes before the train started going back in the direction we came! Suddenly we realised and got off the train at the station we had just come from. We then had to figure out which train was going to get us over to Canary Wharf. To spare you the pretty boring details, we had to change trains at Canary Wharf. Anyway…
We eventually made it over the river to Cutty Sark. Had a quick look at the boat but decided it wasn’t something that we needed to visit properly. We walked towards Greenwich Park and then sat down for some lunch before heading up to the Prime Meridian.
The Greenwich Observatory have figured out that lots of people want to stand on the Prime Meridian so have now put it behind a gate where you can only access it if you have a ticket! However, we managed to find a free line just below it so got our photo on the eastern and western hemispheres!
We spent a bit of time walking around the park and I spent 20p going to the toilet. I panicked that I didn’t have any coins on me, but they have a contactless card scanner on the gates into the toilet which is far more convenient than coins. I’m sure they’re making a lot more money now!
Our next stop was to head up to Kings Cross and walk the canal. We really enjoyed walking along there and seeing how different people live. The sun was shining and Miriam was in her element with all the boats.
The walk took us over to Camden Lock where we got to experience the Camden Market. The market was absolutely buzzing with so many people buying food and other bits and pieces from the market. It was great to be in such an atmosphere and to be able to experience it.
By this point we were feeling pretty exhausted so we found a spot in Regents Park to sit down for a while before making our way back into central London.
In the evening we caught up with Shân & Henry for dinner and we went to Brick Lane. This is an experience I wasn’t expecting in London! Brick Lane is Bagels in the morning and Indian restaurants in the evening. When you walk down the street you barter with the restaurants for a good price and then pick a place to eat. It was so busy and we had a great time with some great food!
Our experience coming home was a new one as well. The Central Line had tube strikes and it was the line we needed to get home. They were still running trains, but on a 20 minute frequency. So at 10pm on a Friday night, we were cramming into a train carriage with a lot of people and heading home! I’ve never been in a train so full, and just when you thought no one else could fit, more people got on!
So all in all, we were exhausted by the end of 3 crazy days in London! We saw as much as we could, and next time we come there will still be more!
This has been a long post because we just crammed in so much! Nice job if you managed to get this far – to reward you, there are some photos below.
Bye for now! 👋🏻
