London baby!

Here is my last vacation post, and then Sarah is going to take back over the blog! We made it to London in the afternoon and took the Heathrow Express train directly to our hotel, which was the Hilton at the Paddington station. It was an expensive little train, but there is nothing like a 15 minute ride straight to your hotel. Due to my months in Jackson, I had built up over 100,000 Hilton Honors points which ended up saving us over $1000 on our trip to London! I had no idea how expensive the cost of living was in London. The first night, we ate dinner at Garfunkel's which has prices which seemed typical of an American restaurant, but when you calculate that a British pound is roughly $1.70 you realize you are paying 70% more for everything! The first morning we took "the Tube" to ride the Duck which is always a favorite of Sarah and mine. While we were there we also took the tour of Westminster Abbey(where Sarah tried to identify things she say in William and Kate's wedding). It was pretty impressive to see the graves of Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, the British Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and tons of English royalty.  We also enjoyed touring the Tower of London and although Sarah didn't appreciate all the stories about executions, she did enjoy seeing the British Crown Jewels which are also displayed/protected there. On the final night, we bought the Day and Night pass to the London Eye which allowed us to go around the eye once during the daylight and once at night. It was a lot of fun to see the sights of London from above and I thought it was even more fun to see the same sights at night.

Riding the Duck is always a great way to learn about a new city!

Westminster Abbey from the Duck

Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament from the Thames while on the Duck

Westminster Abbey

Buckingham Palace and the Queen Victoria Memorial at dusk

Spooky view of Tower Bridge from inside the Tower of London

Building inside the Tower of London that holds the Crown Jewels

The oldest tower in the Tower of London complex...the White Tower built in 1066

Tower Bridge

Never saw anyone use one, but the telephone booths are still all over London

Big Ben and Westminster Abbey from the London Eye

The same picture at night....pretty cool

View of the London Eye at night

View of one of the other pods while we were on the London Eye