London was the first weekend trip that I took by myself and the first time I stayed in a hostel! To be honest, when I was booking my train ticket and hostel I was a little nervous. I was worried about what I would do if something went wrong and I was all by myself with no one to help me or if I got super lost (which is always possible, I like to wonder) or if I would just be super lonely spending a weekend alone in a foreign city. However, by Thursday morning as I was getting on my train most of my nerves had gone away. My train ride was super easy with no transfers. Once I got London the first thing that I did was look into the best way to get to my hostel, check in, and drop a few things off that I didn't want to carry around the rest of the day. My hostel was a few blocks from London Bridge so I took the underground train (the tube) there and walked the rest of the way.
The hostel that I stayed at was called St Christopher's Inn. The bed that I booked was in a 21 person dormitory. There were 7 triple high bunk beds in the room and I got a middle bunk. I am a fairly tall person so my biggest challenge with the bunk was trying not to hit my head. Each bed had a locker next to it to put stuff in (you did have to bring your own lock). After checking in, I went and wondered around near the hostel. I went to London Tower Bridge and the Tower of London.
Friday morning I signed up for a 4 hour biking tour of London through Fat Tire Tours. I really enjoyed this tour. We got to see so many different places, our guide knew a lot about the history of all the places, she had a lot of fun stories about things that took place in those places or about the people that lived there. The tour took us to Kensington Palace and Gardens, Hyde Park, Wellington Arch, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Horse Guard Square, Big Ben, Parliament Square, and Westminster Abbey. In total, it was a 9 mile bike ride but it did not feel that long. Most of the bike ride was through parks in the area, we were only on the roads for about 5 mins. I would not consider myself someone who is very good at biking but I still had a really great time. After the bike ride, I walked back to a few of the places from the tour that I wanted to spend more time at and explored some of the parks that we biked through.
Westminster Abbey, Kensington Palace, and Wellington Arch
Saturday, I started my day with a walk along the Thames river to St. Paul's Cathedral. I walked the Millennium bridge over to the Globe Theater and then went to the Borough market. I really enjoyed the market. There were so many stands selling a ton of differently things. There was a stand for every type of food, multiple chocolate shops, fresh cheese, bread, fish and other meats, homemade jellies and even flavored honey. It was so busy that it was hard to move through the crowd at some points. After that I took the tube over to the Westminster area. I saw the London Eye, Parliament building, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey. Both the Parliament building and Big Ben were under construction so they looked a little different from when I was in London 5 years ago. I think that Westminster Abbey was my favorite building in London, it is so beautiful. I wanted to go inside but it closes real early on the weekends. Even though I couldn't go inside I still enjoyed being there. The last thing that I did on Saturday was take a tour boat ride from Westminster to London Bridge. It was raining the entire time I was on the boat so I couldn't really see very much. I don't really think that the boat ride as worth my time or money but if nothing else it, got me back to my hostel!
St. Paul's Cathedral, Borough Market, Big Ben
Sunday, was an interesting day. At around 1 am I received an email from the company that I bought my train ticket from saying that the station that I was supposed to leave from might be experiencing some delays. When I looked up my train to see if it was delayed it had actually been canceled! The ticket that I bought was called an off peak ticket which meant that I could use it on any train leaving from that station (London Euston) to Lancaster at off peak times on Sunday. Which basically means that I didn't have to take a specific train back but if I did take the train I was assigned I would have had a reserved seat. So, I ended up getting on a train back to Lancaster that was leaving an hour before I had initially planned on going back. This train was super busy but I did find an open seat and made it back to Lancaster with no other problems.
Below are a few of my photos from the weekend!!