First weekend in London: Doin’ the tourist thing

It’s weird to think that we’ve only been here for 9 day! It really feels like we’ve been here much longer. When we arrived, we were forced to get in to a routine right away because Gina started working on the Monday and I had contracts lined up before we left Canada, so I was starting to work right away too.

Our first week Gina was working 8:30-4:30 and I was working 12-14 hours a day, so we were both so tired at the end of our work day, that we usually just crashed and didn’t get to do any sightseeing. We got cell phones up and running within two days and we were immediately on the hunt for a gym. Life was pretty much as it would have been back home. We decided that our first two weekends here in London were going to be designated for seeing the main things we wanted to see.

Friday night, after work, we decided to shower up and go for supper at Piccadilly Circus. We took the tube over and started walking around. When we got there, my first impression was that it was a smaller version of Times Square. It was pretty cool.

After walking around for a bit, we found a place that we wanted to eat at; A Mexican Restaurant called Chiquitos. When we got in there the first thing we noticed was that they really cram the tables together but we were starving and didn’t care and I was craving Mexican food (pretty much my favourite food in life) so we stayed. The food was amazing and our server was fantastic. I had the chicken enchiladas and Gina had the Mexican beef wrap.

We ended up chatting with our server forever. It ends up his dad just moved to Montreal, so we chatted about Canada, and his wife is from Texas, so we talked about the states, and he told us where to go and visit in England. I think we talked to him for about 20 minutes after we had already paid.

From what I understand, you don’t usually tip in this country. I find that extremely weird and I sometimes feel really bad about it because I’ve been brainwashed to tip my servers. From what I’ve read, you can tip your server if you feel you’ve had really good service. I felt we had amazing service so I decided to tip him with some Canadian money I happened to have on me, for his trip to Montreal when he visits his dad (he’s never been to Canada before). He thanked us, took a look at the $5 bill and said “Leave it to Canada to put hockey on their notes” ha ha ha…

We had a relatively early night because we knew we were going to have a big day the next day.

The first place we saw on Saturday was Big Ben. What a giant, amazing sight.

After that we walked across the street and stared at Westminster Abbey for a bit. I’m a huge fan of old architecture (probably the main reason I’ve fallen in love with this city) and I think I snapped about 10 random angle shots of the building. I was disappointed we couldn’t go in, but it was still a sight to see.

As we were walking to Buckingham Palace, we stumbled upon Westminster Arms, the oldest Brewhosuse in Britain.

We had to stop in for a beer. Gina got “Kent’s Best” which she really liked (I didn’t)

And I got “Late Red” which I really liked (but Gina didn’t)

We then proceeded on to Buckingham Palace.

The palace itself was just a big building, but what I loved was the statues that surrounded it! The next two pictures are two of my favourite that I’ve ever taken, anywhere. I promise you, I didn’t Photoshop either of them.

What we didn’t know about before heading out was that Saturday was the day the Pope was going to the palace. There was so much security around and so many people (and they even had 5 helicopters just hovering over the palace), it was crazy. We decided to head out before the crowd got too big because neither of us is Catholic and there were protests starting about the Pope being there, which we didn’t care for either.

After our long day, we grabbed a few bottles of wine (you can get Wolf Blass Yellow label for £4, crazy) and some supper and we just chilled the rest of the night and most of Sunday.

This weekend I think we’re going to do Royal Exchange, Barrow market, Covent Garden, Abbey Road Studios, Camden Market, Hyde Park, the Tower and the Hard Rock. Who knows what else it may have in store. We just want to get as much in as we can now because we’re going to start travelling soon, we hope.