Travel Truths: England

I was in London for 2 days with my daughter after the Canary Island and Porto. Truth be told, we kind of struggled getting into City touring after the nice vacation we'd had. It was busy, crowded and rainy. The hop-on hop-off bus we were on got stuck in rush hour traffic (for about an hour) and the crowds were getting restless, yelling at the driver etc. Needless to say, we got off and found the nearest subway (Tube) station. That presented it's own challenges as you can't buy a single ticket anymore. You must get an Oyster Card and load it up with money, not really cheap. It's worth it though to be able to be flexible. Next time I will get the Oyster Card right away at the airport and not worry about it after. I ended up giving away my Oyster Cards with quite a bit of money on them when flying out to a happy local. It was expensive and annoying, we didn't really feel like doing much - in the rain. We ended up taking a rainy boat ride on the Themes out to Greenwich, found an Indian restaurant for lunch and then magically the sun came out for a bit so we walked up to the observatory on the hill. Back in downtown London we checked out the Tower of London and decided to leave the crowds behind and went to the roof top bar of the Citizen M hotel across the way and had a fantastic view of the old fortress and London Bridge.

Interestingly, we both look back fondly of our time in London now even though we had our fair share of frustrations while there. Even a bad day of travel can become a good memory.

Love Claudia