Old London Town

We had booked a hostel called Piccadilly Backpackers – which turned out to be smack bang in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. Awesome location. We dumped our stuff in the dorm and went out to explore. First we walked to Leicester Square and bought cheap tickets to Phantom of the Opera! We turned our noses up at 12pound cinema tickets (they were 5pounds in Sheffield) and went to Trafalgar Square instead. I encouraged/forced Timon to jump up onto the ledge so I could take his photo with the lions. He had to take out a few kids to get a good photo, but if you’ve seen Facebook, it was totally worth it. We walked down Regent Street and checked out all the levels of Hamley’s toy store, and caught the tube back from Oxford Circus to the theatre. The show was ACES. I’ve only ever seen the Gerard Butler film version but Timon is an avid fan of the show. Our seats were quite high up but we had only slightly restricted vision. The music, the songs, the singing, the costumes, the CHANDELIER, the drama! We both loved it.

On Sunday we dashed over to Buckingham Palace for a quick photo op before meeting up with Ross. (Oh, just quickly, we had a terrible meal at a nearby pub – a very disappointing ploughman’s sandwich and a tiny, awful English breakfast). We took Ross to the Tower of London but refused its 20pound entry fee. Instead we marveled at the outside and at the Tower Bridge. Then we headed out to Wimbledon to see Ross’ house, meet his roomies and collect my extra luggage that he’d graciously carried from Berlin to London (so I could avoid excess baggage fees). Timon and I braved the outer train network and made our way back to the city centre, sneaking in KFC for dinner and a screening of Season of the Witch – a way more violent and scary than I expected Nicolas Cage film. We spent the rest of the evening watching Friday Night Lights episodes like tired travelers.

We spent the next morning getting to Heathrow in plenty of time for our flight. We had lunch at the airport and boarded an Icelandair plane (no free food), arriving in Iceland a few hours later. On one hand it was intimidating being back in a country where English was not the primary language but on the other hand – Iceland and the Blue Lagoon was something I had seen in a TV special ages ago and had dreamt of ever since.