London

A couple of weeks ago my boyfriend came to visit, and we took the opportunity to do some traveling outside of Paris. Our first stop was London. I was so excited about it, since I was little I have wanted to go to England. I have always had this fascination with Europe, and some countries in particular including England and the city of London.

 
London is much bigger than I expected it to be. I guess since Paris was a lot smaller that I expected I was expecting London to be like Paris in that way. Places are much more spread out, and it takes longer time to go from one place to the other. Eventhough metro and buses are very convenient and easy to use they can get expensive, and you have to be careful otherwise you will spent a little fortune just going form one place to another.

We were there for 3 days, having taking the first train out of Paris to get to London as early as possible. We get to the hotel leave the suitcases, and go get into the Hop-On/Hop-Offto take an overview on London to decide where to go the next day. We were not counting on the strike of workers that took central London creating tremendous traffic problems. This cause that our city tour that should just take about 2 hours to go all around, took almost 6 hours. It was such a horrible thing. We did manage to do some sightseeing, but not as we would've liked. The one thing I loved about this day, was that we were able to score some discounted tickets to go see the Musical "The Phantom of the Opera" in West End.

 

 
This is such a great musical, I have always heard about it, but never really though I would see it. We absolutelly loved the experience. It had been a really long time since I have been to the theater and I had forgotten how great it was, that we even said that we will try to do this more often. The story is great, the actors, and of course the music, which was live, just the whole thing made for a really nice evening to be together.

 

 The next couple of days we spent our time touring around, and doing some sightseeing. Some highlights were taking a walking tour of the change of guard, which I was so glad we took, since the guide was so knowledgeable and showed us thingsI wouldn't have seen on my own, then visiting the Tower of London with a guided visit offered by the beefeaters, and the other one thing my boyfriend spoiled me with, was going to take tea at the Kensigngton Palace.
 

I was very dissaponted when I wasn't able to visit Buckingham Palace since it is only open to the public on summer.

3 Days are definitively not enough to see London and its surroundings, there is so much more to see. I am hoping to be able to go back before I return to America. There still are quite a few places I would like to visit.
On the mean time I hope you all enjoy the pictures, and get a glimpse of London.