Trip #8 - London, England - November 2004
Becca and I spent a long weekend in London between Thursday November 4 and Monday November 8, 2004. I saw a cheap package on the Virgin Vacations website. Airfare from D.C. and three nights at a hotel for $1,200. Not too bad.
Check out the pictures.
We arrived at Heathrow bright and early on Friday morning, November 5, 2004. We got tube tickets and took the Picadilly line to Earl's Court and walked to our hotel. We checked in and, even though it was 10:00 and the check-in time was 2:00 p.m., we were able to snag a room. It was a smoking room, but one would never know it. The room was quite small, and included a double bed--which took up about half of the room.
We napped until about 1:30 and then got up and ate at a local tavern. The food was so-so, hamburgers that were more meatloaf-esque. Then we took the tube downtown and picked up our London Pass for Saturday. We then headed to the London Dungeon, which was OK. Fortunately, there was no line--we passed it on Saturday and there was a line around the block. From there we walked to the Tower Hill tube station and snacked at a pub before meeting up with our Jack the Ripper tour. There were a ton of people, so they split the group in two. We came across several other groups as we wondered the East-End streets. I took some night pictures.
On Saturday we headed to Westminster Abbey, stopping briefly to take a few pictures of Big Ben. Then we headed over to the Tower of London. Next, we took the tube to Wapping and ate at the Captain Kidd pub. After lunch we hit the Clink Prison Museum, which was relatively cool. You only got to see a few rooms, but it didn't look like a fun place to spend a lot of time! Next we hit a reproduction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. We then headed to Porter's Restaurant. The food was good, and not too expensive--for London.
On Sunday we took a tour with Golden Tours (booked here) to Leeds Castle. First we stopped in Greenwich and saw the Cutty Sark. Then we went to Leeds Castle, which is really cool. We had tea, but did not have time to go through the cool maze. :( Next we headed to Canterbury for lunch. It is a cool Medieval town with narrow streets and over-hanging buildings. After lunch we headed into the Cathedral. For an extra £2.00 I was allowed to take pictures inside, which was well worth it. Afterwards, we headed to Dover. Although it was cloudy all day, the clouds seemed to end at the edge of England and it was quite clear over the English Channel. We had an excellent view of France, and stopped to take some pictures of Dover Castle, before heading down to the beach and taking some pictures of the White Cliffs. We headed back to town and we ate at the Albert Restaurant, near Victoria Station. The food was pretty good, and then we headed over to a little Italian restaurant for dessert.
Our trip home was reasonably uneventful. We watched Shrek II, The Manchurian Candidate, and Anchorman on the plane. We landed a little late in D.C. and headed back home. Not a bad long weekend in London!