Tourist stuff

I couldn’t sleep super well last night as a result of jet lag and a really warm room. This morning I decided to meander for a bit and find a park to listen to some music or a podcast. It was pretty easy to find a place to sit but I found myself wanting to explore more. London is really nice in the early morning before the temperature gets too high. I kept finding random old buildings and churches, a took a few pictures but quickly realized that trying to photograph everything old in London is impossible.

I didn’t feel like going to the hostel again so I just kept walking. I laughed to myself, it’s hard to tell the difference between buildings that are derelict, or just old but still in use. A lot of the pubs I’ve passed looked like they hadn’t been maintained for some time, the only way to know the we’re still in use was the recent menus outside some of them.

its kind of a given, but there are statues everywhere. I ended up in Trafalgar Square and found some statues of Churchill, Ghandi, and Nelson Mandella, ( and a weird thembs up statue with a giant thumb)

i kept walking and found Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. I got a picture with Big Ben and decided to break my low spending goal for the day and pay to see the inside of West Minster Abbey. It cost £22 but it was definitely worth it. Getting to see the graves of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin was crazy. They’ve got so much old sculptures and history there, it was definitely worth it.

from there, I walked to Buckingham Palace. Honestly, it was pretty underwhelming. The photos make it look much bigger than it is, I opted to skip the tour for this one and just grab a picture.

by this point I had done 20,000 steps and it wasn’t even 2:00 yet. I was getting pretty tired but I continued walking back towards Big Ben as there was one more place I wanted to go.

ive found myself always wanting water or a drink. It’s really easy to spend on drink cause my mind thinks they’re reasonably priced at £2.00 each.

I made my way to my final destination, the Imperial War Museum. Oh my goodness, that museum is amazing. My family saw the Gallipoli exhibit in Wellington when we were in New Zealand, this place had exhibits a lot like that, except there were 6 of them. I probably spent an hour and a half in the WWI exhibit alone. They had all sorts of guns and weapons a vehicles, but they also talked about trench warefare and a lot about the recruitment campaigns they ran to get more troops. Canada was mentioned a fair amount which was nice. They had a WW1 tank you could walk around which was really cool. I spent a bunch of time looking at the WWII stuff but not as much. By the time I got to the last exhibits I was pretty tired and couldn’t focus as much. But for a free museum, it was amazing. I definitely felt the benefit of going alone, I spent so much time there, my family would have been bored and wanted to move on.

i finished up the day by finding a Canadian themed pub and grabbing some pouting with bacon and sausage. They charged a stupid price for molson and sleeman’s but they had a “maple lager” (named after the business not maple flavored -Dad) that was brewed locally. It was actually pretty not bad.

now I’m just chilling at the hostel, resting my feet. Tomorrow is either Stonehenge, a LAN cafe, or just chilling at parks and stuff, I haven’t really decided yet.

more pictures

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