I was able to book an evening flight from Glasgow to London for a mere $16 with RyanAir, and transportation to and from the airports cost me a grand total of $20, setting a new record in the "Cheapest Flight Jess Has Ever Taken" category. I also realized, shortly after boarding the plane, that it was my first flight since the one that brought me to Europe in the first place.
It was a relief to be back in London. Though Evan and I were staying in an AirBnB in a completely different part of London than I'd stayed in before, it was still a familiar city, and one that I already knew how to get around. Which came in really handy when I started to get motionsick on the shuttle from the airport; I didn't have to spare too much thought to figure out which bus to take and how to pay for it.
Since we hadn't gotten in until 1:00am, we let ourselves sleep in a bit on Evan's first morning in London. Then we caught a red double-decker bus to Hyde Park Corner and walked by Buckingham Palace, where we were surprised to find a huge crowd of people waiting. First we thought the Queen herself must be putting in an appearance, but it turned out that everyone was waiting for the changing of the guard. Evan and I were too hungry to stick around for the whole ceremony, but we caught the very beginning of it as we continued on in search of breakfast.
Evan was set on having a full English breakfast that morning, but I was craving waffles, so we found a place that served both. #winning
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| He also had Earl Grey tea, because he thinks he's posh or something. |
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| #stillwinning |
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| Okay, fine. He didn't care whether he had a picture with Big Ben. But I did. 😜 |
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| Ditto for the phone booth picture. |
Then we headed to Covent Garden, where--in the week and a half since I'd last been in London--they'd set up a Santa's Workshop made entirely out of Legos.
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| We also got freebie Lego kits to build our own reindeer. Because we're children. |
It turned out to be a bit of a Lego-themed day, because after that, we visited the Lego store around the corner.
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| Child. |
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| Children. |
Next up on Evan's tour of London was Harrods, where we fought the Christmas crowds to do a little Christmas shopping of our own. Still in the Christmassy spirit, we looped back around to Hyde Park to visit the Winter Wonderland (it's much more fun when you have someone with you than it is to go by yourself).
We called it a night not too long after that, since we were getting up early for a day trip to Stonehenge and Bath the next morning.
It turned out that we didn't have to be up quite so early as we'd thought. We arrived at the meeting point only to discover that I'd gotten the time wrong and we were an hour early. Oops.
Well, the tour was worth the wait. Our tour guide was a hilariously narcissistic Londoner who kept an entire double-decker coach (not bus, he was very adamant on that point) full of people informed and entertained for the whole day.
First stop was Stonehenge, that mystical prehistoric monument that has fascinated researchers and tourists alike for centuries.
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| They don't let you get closer than this because apparently there's a lot of archaeological evidence in the area under and around the stones as well, which of course they don't want tourist disturbing. |
There are a lot of fascinating questions surrounding Stonehenge, including not only why it was built, but how. I mean, thinking back to prehistoric times, what tools could they have used to cut the stones, haul them from where they were cut (some from 32 km away, others from up to 250 km away), and raise and stack them? It's kind of crazy to think about, and researchers still aren't sure what the answers are.
After standing around staring at a bunch of rocks, we boarded the bus--sorry, coach-- and headed for Bath, another place steeped in ancient legends.
Apparently, the city of Bath began around 860 BC, when Prince Bladud (father of King Lear) caught leprosy. He was banished from the court and forced to scrape together a living by looking after pigs. Apparently, some of the pigs also had some sort of skin disease, but were cured by rolling around in the hot mud of the springs.Prince Bladud followed their example and his leprosy was miraculously cured. A short time later, he became king and founded the city of Bath as a place of healing.
When the Romans came to England in the first century AD, they built spectacular temples in the city, as well as the famous Roman baths, which were buried in a mudslide after the decline of the Roman Empire, and left undiscovered until Victorian times. The city had grown on top of them, passing in and out of fashion as royalty and members of the gentility followed the legend, seeking cures for their various ailments.
Queen Victoria was one of those people, and her preference for Bath made it more popular than ever. The construction of a new bathhouse in the center of the city led to the discovery of the old Roman baths below, which had been well-preserved by the mud that had buried them. Since then, the ancient Roman baths have been the main tourist attraction for the city.
You can no longer actually bathe in them, as the plumbing (which was incredibly modern for its time) is rusty and full of lead. However, a new pipe has been connected to one of the underground springs to allow visitors to drink some of the famous healing water, which Evan and I both did. Can't say it was the tastiest water I've ever drank (drunk? Ugh, grammar), but if I come back to the States with superhuman powers, you know where they came from.
Because of our super-early start that morning, by the time we got back to London that evening, Evan and I were pretty wiped out. But we managed to muster up enough energy to visit a pub near our AirBnB, called the Earl of something (almost every pub in England is named after a Duke, an Earl, or a King).
We got a much later start the next morning, but still managed to make it to the British Museum not too long after they opened. In all honesty, we didn't really do the museum justice--since I hadn't had any coffee yet, I was seriously dragging--but we did check out the museum's most famous artifact: the Rosetta Stone.
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| Our best Easter-Island-head faces. |
After a quick pick-me-up in a café (coffee and baked goods were a necessity), we headed off to the British Library, which turned out to be one of the coolest things that I have seen on this trip (and I've seen a LOT of cool things).
In the Sir John Ritblat Treasures of the British Library Gallery, there are hundreds of amazing texts, from gorgeously illustrated Bibles and Qur'ans to pages from Leonardo Da Vinci's notebook to drafts of original Beatles music to the actual Magna Carta. It was mesmerizing, seeing these things firsthand. One of the coolest parts of the exhibition was that they had headphones, so you could listen to recordings of Handel's Messiah or Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik while looking at the page where it was first written down by the composer himself. It was practically a transcendental experience.
If you ever find yourself in London, this is a must-do. Seriously.
Evan and I spent so much time in the British Library that by the time we left, it was dark outside (and had been for a little while already). We once again braved crowds of Christmas shoppers to check out Oxford Street, the other main shopping street in London. Unlike Regent Street though, Oxford Street has stores that real people can afford to shop at.
The next morning, we got up early and took a short bus ride to Abbey Road Studios, which we had realized was actually pretty close to our AirBnB. Because I refused to leave London without this picture:
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| Shoutout to the random bystander who was willing to stand in the middle of a busy street to help us get this shot. |
It was a great way to say goodbye to London before I headed off to my next city: Cardiff!
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