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.: London, England- 2003 :.
In July 2003, I had the opportuinity to travel to London, England. My dad wanted to go on a cheap cruise in Alaska or Eastern Canada, which I thought wouldn't be that fun. I talked my dad into going to London becuase I figured London would be fun to go to. It was my first time out of North America, and it was a AMAZING experience. I got to travel to all of the sights I had seen before such as Tower Bridge. I actually found out that when the state of Arizona bought London Bridge, they actually thought they bought the Tower Bridge, but in reality London Bridge was just a really old bridge that needed to be replaced. Any who, the trip to London was an amazing experience.
I left London on July 22nd. We left from Lester B. Pearson Airport, probably better known as Toronto Airport, even though it IS in Mississauga. Well, our plan departed at 11:05pm and we were told to get there AT LEAST three hours before the plane departed. We got there three and a half hours early and after getting our tickets, checking in, and then going through security we were ready to board our plane 3 hours before our plane departed. It wasn't that bad because I got my dad to buy me The Darwin Awards: Second Edition which I think is a must for everyone to read. Well we boarded our plane and were off. The plane ride was okay and we got into Gatwick Airport at 10:00 London Time. Our plane arrived 45 minutes early, which was fine with me becuase that meant more time to explore. Costums was a BITCH. They made you stand in a line for like 45 minutes which is really annoying. Well we got through that and were off on our shuttle bus to London.
OMG!!!! The ride from the Airport to the hotel was horrible. There were 2 other groups of people on the bus. A old oriental couple, a younger coupler, who I think were dating, from Windsor,ON and then me and my dad. It was really funny because just outside of the airport it's all farm s and fields but then bang, you hit dense city which I found weird cause in the Grater Toronto Area its a slow rise from suburbs to city, but there really aren't farms, just lighter density cities. But in London you go straight from farm to city. Of course we were the last to get dropped off at our hotel. It took two and a half hours to get from the airport to the hotel. It was worst because the "shuttle bus" was a regular van and it was designed to seat 14 people, which is humaine to me. The seats were no wider that 20cm which is very, very sad.
We got to our hotel and found out that the reason it was the largest hotel in Central London was because the rooms were so small. It had two single beds, which weren't really single beds because the single beds I were use to were twice the size of these ones. Well, anyway, we made ourselves comfortable (as much as you can in the cramped space they gave us) and then decided what we would do with the rest of the day. We looked at the card key to our room and found that there was a very bad and small map of the area and found that we were only like 2 blocks away from the British Museum. We figured it would be the most senseable place to visit mainly because it was close and free. So we got up and left.
Well, we got lost on the way there because we were suppose to head towards Russell Square but instead we ended up at Ghandi square. We tried to guess what went wrong and decided that we went the wrong way so we headed down the other way. Well, we ended up there after a little more searching. I figured that it would be more like the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) with it's architecture but I was wrong. It had a rock outside that some exhibits then you entered the centre of the building which was a great space with a glass roof allowing lots of light to enter the room. In the very centre of the room was a gigantic round building which was the museums reading room, which wasn't open appearently to the public. Well we looked around for a while until I felt really sick and felt like I was going to be sick and talked my dad into going back to the hotel. We went back and I litterally collapsed on my bed and just passed out because I hadn't slept for like 30 hours because I don't sleep on planes because it feels too uncomfortable and also there are movies too that aren't that bad.
I work up at around midnight local time and found my dad awake and saying he was about to go to bed so I went to the bathroom, then went back to my bed to sleep. It wasn't that easy cause my dad SNORES!!!! It's not the quiet snore but the loud annoying one that you can't get out of your head. Also because we were in such a small room, he was about 2 feet away from me so it got VERY bad. While I fell asleep again then woke up the next day.
We had breakfast, which was complimentary. That means you get cold toast, warm milk, hot orange juice and water that...might as well have been boiled to death. I just had a glass of orange juice and then we went back to our room and decided what we'd do. We decided on going to the Tower of London and decided we'd take The Original Bus Tour. Which meant we'd ride around on a two storey bus and get to look and places then once we got to a stop we'd like, we'd get off and could get back at any stop we wanted to. We bought our tickets at our hotel desk, found a bus parked outside our hotel, which was a stop, and got on.
We had to transfer because the bus we got on was on a route that only went to hotels and all the attractions were on the other routes. We got to a transfer point and swtiched buses.
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