Oh London you rocked!

What can I say about my trip? It was a trip of a lifetime that’s for sure. Even just getting to London was such a neat experience. We were able to fly world business class on KLM and for me that was a new way to travel. The treatment you get is so high class. That’s the way to travel especially on a 9+ hour flight. My vacation in Europe started with a 48 hour stay in London since our ship left from the port in Harwich. This was my first time in Europe & I totally enjoyed it. I got a chance to do a lot while I was there but I still want to go back. We got to London in the early afternoon on Friday and after we checked into our hotel, we spent the rest of the day walking around Oxford Street which is filled with shops and restaurants. First thing I noticed about London… uumm the cars are driven on the other side of the street. That was the most confusing thing while I was there. Luckily for us tourists, there are signs on the streets to tell you which way to look when crossing the street. I never thought I would be confused with such a simple task. My nieces wanted to go to Topshop so we ventured into this huge 4 story building. To me, it seemed like a more expensive H & M. Afterwards, we had long dinner and then we all went to bed as we were all exhausted from a day of travel.

We woke up early on Saturday and a few of us decided to do the Big Bus Company tour which also included a river boat tour. Some of the tour highlights were seeing Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Piccadilly Square, the London Eye, Hyde Park, Tower Bridge & Harrods. I gotta stop here and talk about Harrods. HOLY CRAP! I’ve been in some nice department stores but this one for sure is so over the top that you can’t even enjoy being in there with the amount of people that are in the store. It’s definitely an experience and you could spend the day just people watching. This place is so big that we were trying to find this pub inside of Harrods and we couldn’t find it. To get back to the same entrance we came in from, we had to walk out to the street and walk around the building to find our way back. It’s a spectacular store but I would want to visit after hours. We didn’t get a chance to see Buckingham Palace because there was some confusion with the tour bus. We ended up walking around Oxford Street again and that’s when I spotted SuperDrug. It’s basically like a Walgreens and as you saw from my previous post, I hauled quite a bit. I also hauled at Boots but those purchases were done the day we came back from the cruise. That night we ended up going to dinner to this yummy place called Grand Bazaar which sold an assortment of different cuisines such as Mediterranean, Italian & Indian if I remember correctly. We had a great meal there and it was nice to just sit back and talk about all we had seen that day. The next day (Sunday) we all got up early to go on our cruise. Wheeee!

Here are some pictures from my time in London. Some pictures were taken with my iPhone and others with my Canon PowerShot.

Simon says...

London Eye

The desserts at Harrods

Tower Bridge

With Big Ben in the background

According to the guides, it isn't often that you see the bridge open

Oxford Street at night

The lights at the Grand Bazaar restaurant. I thought it was a neat way to decorate the place.

Barry M display at SuperDrug

Reflection of Harrods

Westminster Abbey