Bridges



London Eye



London has bridges. A lot of bridges. And as you walk along the Thames River, ironically, the least impressive of all is the London Bridge. Probably because it's fallen down so many times over the years.

After checking into our hotel, we took the tube to Westminster Abbey and saw many sites in that area. Then we went for a walk down the Thames River. We started out close to the London Eye (we didn't go on it - the line was terrible!) and took the 2.5 - 3 mile walk to the Tower Bridge. We stopped along the way several times. The weather was in the low 80's and hardly a cloud in the sky. People were EVERYWHERE! It was obvious that this wasn't the norm (normal October high is 59, and October is historically the wettest month of the year there), so it seemed like everyone was taking advantage of it. It did make for some great people-watching!



Millennium Bridge &
St. Paul's Cathedral

We tried some good food throughout the day: a nice sandwich for lunch, and traditional English pasties for dinner. We enjoyed a nice cup of coffee along the way, and just tried to push through our exhaustion. It was a fun and not too stressful first day of our trip.



So, why did we go to London? Well, every reasonably-priced flight to Berlin included a layover in London. We figured if we had to stop there, might as well stop for a couple of days! I hadn't been since high school, and Zack had never been outside of Heathrow.



Tower Bridge





International Travel Tip #4: don't exchange money at the airport if you can avoid it. The exchange rates always seem out of whack there. We ordered currency through our local bank a couple of weeks before the trip. We also called our bank and advised that we'd be out of the country, so they didn't freeze our bank cards or credit cards. While on the phone, they advised which banks we could use to avoid extra ATM fees.



Chelsea Football Club



International Travel Tip #5: As I've said before, we love Priceline! I didn't know until this trip that you can use Name Your Own Price for international hotels, too (I'm sure it's not all countries, but it's worth checking). Funny thing is, we ended up at the same chain of hotels in London as we'd gotten in New York earlier this year. We had a great room at the Millennium/Copthorne located at the Chelsea Football stadium (literally AT the stadium - within the gates!). While it was a little bit outside of the city, it was very close to a tube station, so it was easy to navigate to the city, the airport, etc.