Nice is nice: London (cont'd)

Alright, so you've read up to the point where I was mentioning just how gross the hostel coffee tasted.... let us continue:

We ventured our way along the London Tube system on this lovely Saturday morning.... did I mention that the tube is quite extensive, and since we were staying a little ways from the downtown core of London, that it is tricky to know exactly WHICH train will get you to where you want to go - well, only when there is crazy construction! So crazy construction - on weekends, the city shuts down parts of (or entire) tube lines so that they can be repaired. We did not know this until we got to a station and realized the train wasn't going any further. Hmm... what do we gotta do? Ah yes, go back the way we came and try again. So that's what we did! 30 mins to an hour later, we get to where wanted to be, along with a good lesson learned - "Even though the map says it's the way to go, it probably isn't". That's the moral, right? Or am I getting it wrong?

You think you're so good, don't you London Undergound?

So, we're where we need to be. Multiple friends suggested that we take the Bus tour of London - tickets are good for 48h and the boat cruise is included. Why not then eh? 22 pounds later, we've got our tickets and we're boarding the Yellow tour (for those of you who know the London bus tour, the Yellow tour is the narrated one). "YAY! A NARRATOR!" we thought to ourselves, but little did we know that this man was going to make fun of me as soon as I got on the bus. I was wearing headphones (not listening to music - I had just turned it off for the tour), and the narrator states into the microphone for everyone on the top deck to hear "Well, this girl doesn't even want to pay attention to me, she's got headphones in. Pay 22 pounds for a tour that you don't even want to be on." That's not the embarrassing part though. The part that got me was when April and I walked up to the top deck to find everyone laughing at me because I was the girl with the headphones. To make matters worse, there were no free seats up top, so we ended up walking back down to sit by the narrator and chat him up during the tour (at least until some people up top got off the bus). [I feel like this story was one where you had to be there to get the full effect of the embarrassment - to you, the reader, it might feel like I'm just explaining a simple event in great detail. Let us know what you think with a comment.]

Ju with headphones and a ticket ready to board the bus!

Away we went on the double decker bus, and oh the sites we saw!! Buckingham Palace, London Bridge, Tower Bridge, Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, the Clock Tower (what we refer to as Big Ben), Hyde Park, St. Paul's Cathedral, and much much more.

Here are some samples of what we saw: