Part 2: London

Jake and I flew in from Dublin on our €5 Ryanair tickets. Our hotel was a sigh of relief after the icky hostel. It was definitely a budget hotel, a bit musty, with a hole in the bathroom wall hidden by a piece of computer paper. But it was a hotel nonetheless, breakfast included. We were happy.

So it was onto our two-and-a-half day grand tour of the city. We met up with some of Jake's friends and saw as much as we could in the time we had.

For me, London was a great change from Paris. I find Paris incredibly filthy, but London is not. This was very strange becaue Paris has millions of garbage cans, sometimes two or three clustered together in one location. Finding a garbage can in London was like playing Where's Waldo. I think there might be five in the whole city. But it's still so clean! How does that work?

Unlike Dublin, I loved walking around here. The architecture made me feel all warm and bubbly. Here's the street our hotel was on. I love how open and airy the buildings were. I understand why it's expensive to live here, because they're huge old classic buildings that take up a lot of space. Old and big is not cheap real estate. But it is beautiful real estate.


London is old city, that's definitely clear. But it's arms are open for the new. I took this pictue from St. Paul's cathedral. I like a city that is willing to change, while still respecting its roots.


I liked this photo too. In the backround, you can see the London Eye, the ferris wheel. That would have been cool to go up in, but it costs something like 35 pounds for a ride. Kind of like everything in London.



I'm not really happy with the pictures I took here. Nothing really captures what I am trying to say about the city. There was so much color in the buildings. Once again, I'm comparing it to Paris, where everything is old-yellowed-stone color. Here, white! Red! And old-yellowed-stone color too, but mixed in with other colors.

Out of all the sites we saw and things we did, I think my favorite was going to see a play. I probably wouldn't have done this if we hadn't been with a theater buff. I seriously had no idea how big shows and musicals are in London. The one we saw was called 39 steps.


It's an adaptation of a Hitchcock film, but funny. There are only four actors. The one main guy plays the same role throughout the whole show, then the other three play every other character. I enjoyed it.

I also liked the Tate Modern, which Jake and I squeezed in at the very last minute. My favorite there was a Roy Lichentein series paying homage to Monet's haystacks.

I wished we could have stayed longer in London and done more. Three days is definitely not enough time for the city. But I can always go back. It was soon time for us to leave the other two, who were heading to Dublin, while Jake and I made our way to Paris.