Day 5: London – No Words

No words can describe our newfound love for London. It has found a new home at the top of our Favorite Cities list, but before we get to that, let’s rewind to 9AM, Sunday morning.

We’re pretty sure England wanted us to love it. We had beautiful weather during our 4 day stay, which is pretty unheard of. A few clouds in the morning, but they usually cleared up and let us enjoy all that the country has to offer. Our lovely hosts treated us to a breakfast of croissants and fruit, drove us to the train station, and helped us navigate the ticket machines. A quick 40 minutes later, we were there.

Our new favorite mode of transport

Now, if you haven’t realized already, we don’t really make detailed plans when we travel. We take more of the “just wander around” approach, which has proved to be foolproof. With that method in mind, we exited Waterloo Station and almost immediately hit the Thames and took a stroll along The Queen’s Walk on London’s South Bank.

Margot and Ellen had mentioned that the Realfood Festival was held near Waterloo Station and yep, there it was! Right along with a Streets of Spain festival (perhaps put there to get us ready for our next stop?!)

Tasting the toffee vodka, as you do

Foreshadowing a late night snack in Madrid perhaps?!

Turn the corner and what do we find? The South Bank street park in all its graffiti glory.

We were caught creeping!

Around the next corner? The freaking London Eye.

Hey there!

Not to mention Parliament is right across the river. (Told you our no-plan plan was foolproof!)

We crossed the Thames and walked in the general direction of Parliament, stumbling upon Whitehall Gardens, where some journaling catch-up happened.

We hit up Parliament & Big Ben just long enough to snap this selfie — the swarm of tourists was a bit too much for us.

It was approaching lunchtime, so we ditched the tourist spots, found the nearest free wifi, and hopped on the tube to Nando’s in South Kensington, which was at the top of Abi’s Restaurants to Hit Up in London list. It did not disappoint.

PLEASE open more Nando’s in the US!

Chicken deliciousness

We may have enjoyed this lunch so much that we went there two more times in our three weeks. Oops. So much for diversifying food choices! #noregrets

Also, South Kensington happens to be an amazing(ly rich) neighborhood, and we wouldn’t mind living there once we find our wealthy European husbands (damn, we really should have mingled with those grad students in Dublin…)

“la la laaa”

The neighborhood was chock full of small, locked gardens that we mega-creeped on. All our attempts to convince the people on the street that yes we did live here and we just happened to forget our keys so you should probably let us in, failed.

A few minutes of walking later and we were smack dab at the Central Park of London: Hyde Park!

Ran into this guy too – Royal Albert Hall

A bocce game with the London Eye and the Shard in the distance

Creepin’ on the soccer dads

And thus concluded day one in London. We were pretty much pooped from hours soaking up awesomeness, so we grabbed a train back to Guildford – just in time for some of Ellen’s homemade lentil soup and corn bread. We relaxed after dinner in the family room, playing some Monopoly, catching up on the latest episode of the Graham Norton Show, and introducing Alexa to her new favorite comedian, Russell Howard. Another lovely evening in England, we must say.

-Abi & Alexa

Day 4: Adios Dublin & Touching Down in Londontown

**Real-time update: Sorry for being sucky at this blogging-about-our-trip thing. Real life hit us both over the head the second we got back to the States, so we’ve been playing catch-up on life & post-graduation things. Speaking of, Alexa survived the 2-day U-Haulicious journey to San Antonio and starts work on Monday (wish her luck!) and I’ve been back in the 9-5 grind (make that 8-5:30, actually) for 2 weeks now in Pittsburgh. Hopefully we’ll hammer out these Euro trip posts soon, but bear with us! Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming**

Day 4 in Dublin was, not gonna lie, a pretty uneventful one. We checked out of our hostel sometime in the AM then found an Insomnia cafe to hang out in for a few hours to reflect on our last hours in Dublin. Some of our final thoughts on Dublin (don’t hate us!) – it definitely was an interesting city, but not our favorite of the trip. It seems like it would be a great city to go to with a group of friends and go out at night, but there was a lack of things to see so filling our days with activities was a little difficult. Maybe it was a lack of planning on our parts (read: we did zero planning), or maybe it was the jet lag. Who knows, but we do have to say going to the other parts of Ireland was amazing!

So, after catching our last glimpses of Dublin, we headed to the airport and began our love hate affair with Ryanair. Oh, Ryanair. For those of you who don’t know, Ryanair is a dirt-cheap airline that flies throughout Europe. The prices are extremely convenient (our cheapest was $30 from Edinburgh to Dublin) but they really know how to annoy their customers. Alexa and I were pros at the end of our 5 Ryanair flights, but they make you hate your life for those few short hours. Some of the inconveniences of a conveniently-priced airline:

1. You had to pay a crapload of money to check your bags. Luckily, we didn’t check our bags.

2. Your need to squeeze your ONE (and they mean one! No carrying your purse separately!) carry-on into these ungodly small metal size-check things so they would fit on the plane

3. Your carry-on had to “be under 10kg”, but they never checked (Thank god! We were definitely over that limit).

4. You sometimes fly into airports into the middle of nowhere. Good thing airport buses exist.

We spent a good amount of our time in the Dublin airport rearranging our backpacks to fit on the plane and they DIDN’T EVEN CHECK AT THE GATE! They just let us on! This should have been a small victory, but Abi literally spent 30 minutes squeezing the bag into the size-check container, then rearranging her backpack, taking out a shirt and putting it on (she wore 6 layers on that flight, only to be beaten out by the 8 layers she wore on the flight back to Dublin a few weeks later) then squeezing, then calling over Alexa to help her get it unstuck from the container, then rearranging…. but they didn’t even check the bag at the desk. All that work for nothing! (At the other 4 airports, the Ryanair people did check though, so you’ve been warned.)

After that whirlwind packing experience, we were finally off to England (our most anticipated stop on the trip!) We had some great views of the English sea and coastlines, then semi-rushed around Gatwick airport after landing in search for the train station, where we were soon greeted with some nice views again, this time of the gorgeous English countryside.

We don’t seem to have any good pictures of the English countryside, so here’s one of us ON the train. HOW EXCITING!

During our few days in London, we actually stayed about 40 minutes south in a town called Guildford with Abi’s family friends, Ellen, Tom, and their 14-year-old daughter Margot. (Their son was taking a 6-month backpacking trip around South America. Shame, we could have bonded over tales of South American adventures).

Ellen and Tom are American but have been in England for over 20 years now, and their kids are were born in England. How. Cool. Abi hadn’t seen them in about 10 years or so, so recognizing them in the Guildford train station was a bit of an adventure. Luckily, Tom and Margot quickly spotted the two Americans who looked very lost.

After quick car ride to their house, we all chatted and caught up for a bit in the kitchen, got situated in our rooms, then headed out to their favorite local pub be treated to a wonderful dinner. Back at the house, we had one of the best/most relaxing evenings ever: hot chocolate, tea, Margot’s delicious homemade truffles, and a game or two of Scattergories. This definitely needs to become a weekend tradition. Tom and Ellen gave us a bit of insider information on how to get into/around London the next day, then we were off to bed.

Up next: LONDON! (aka the greatest city ever)

-Abi & Alexa