Part one:
Trip report for our two weeks on our own in London Jun 14 to June 27
We spent 41 days in UK. Tour with Seymour Travels, Glasgow (on our own for 5 days) and Tour in the Outer Hebrides (Igot2travel) & 14 days on our own in London. This trip report is for London. I will do the other two when I get a chance later this week.
We arrived in London on June 14 coming from Stornoway via British Airlines.
We caught the tube to Hammersmith station. Our hotel for the week was Premier Inn in Hammersmith. Only reason I choose that location was it was not a too far for a tube ride to Heathrow when we leave London on June 27. Our room was small and had a refrigerator.
Weather was very warm for our entire visit. I believe it only had a quick shower for a few minutes while we were here.
We borrowed oyster cards from a friend to get us into London and used them for a couple of days, then we purchased a 7day period cards and top up when we used our time limit up. Our mode of transportation was the tube entire stay. Only one day trip out was to Windsor Castle. Never made it to any other spot. Guess we had too much to see and do in London.
FOOD
Food was good at the hotel for breakfast. Sometimes we ate at fast foods due to short time or nothing was around that was convenient. Sometimes we went to Tesco for food and took back to the hotel. Restaurants on our own ....... a couple times was Prezzo pizza, cafes in museums, pubs, creperie, caffe' concerto, big easy (delicious), ballpark food.
Sites/activities/museums etc
Kensington Palace tour; Harrods; King Albert statue and Hyde park; Tour of Chelsea football stadium; Canary Wharf area; rode the uber boat back to Putney then tube to hotel; Greenwich, cutty sark, prime meridian at the Royal observatory; stroll thru Greenwich market (this was a nice market)
Back to canary wharf and saw the O2 and people were climbing over the roof, IFS cloud cable cars over the Thames and back again.
Walking thru Piccadilly, Theatre district, China town, Leicester square, down Whitehall to Westminster , Big Ben..
Attended Evensong at Westminster Abbey. tube to Southwark to Imperial War Museum (spent most of the day here, enjoyed it). Went to see Jersey Boys musical (been to London previously 3 times and never made it to a show)
An enjoyable event... we went to St Martin in the fields to do a brass rubbing. A friend told us about doing this when she was in London years ago. Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
Shepherd Bush Market (it was kind of bust, maybe got there too early, not many stalls were open). Then we got back on tube and off at Shepherds station and found Westfield shopping mall. This was a very large shopping mall. All sorts of shops, high end stores and more.
Then took a London walks Beatles Mystery tour. Our guide took the group around numerous Beatle areas. Paul McCartney was in town then (we actually missed seeing him and Princess Kate) they were there to reopen the National Portrait gallery and we saw media people and cameras set up outside while we were walking down the street. Back to Beatles.... strolled across Abbey Road.
Also, we have missed going to V & A the past few times. So, we made it to the museum this time. This is another place that you need to return to. Can't see it all in one visit. We just picked out what we wanted to see at this visit. Tour of Royal Albert Hall (interesting tour, learned a lot about this place. Too bad we did not have time to see a performance here. They were sold out during our stay).