Restaurant and Travel Blog: Walking around London Town

The 8.5 hour flight went fast but meant we were up for over 24 hours. We each had about 4 hours of sleep. Two hours on the plane and two hours we gave ourselves at about 1:30pm the next afternoon. We arrived in London at 6am on Thursday having left the USA the previous day at about 2pm. Needless to say our room was not ready. We checked our bags with the hotel and proceeded to walk around London town. We are staying walking distance from Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park both which happily we stumbled upon on our walk. We had breakfast then walked around Chelsea and shopped at Duke of York Square. We were able to get in to our room at 1pm. Wiled away 6 hours but felt very productive. One interesting thing we learned. You don't tip at a restaurant. 12.5% is added automatically onto the check and people rarely tip on top of that. Our cabbi took the only pounds we exchanged dollars for meaning our cab ride into London was a little over $100! We are taking the bus back to the airport. Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore!

Guards at Buckingham Palace. Changing of the guard didn't happen until 11:30am. We will hopefully catch that on Saturday when Buckingham Palace opens to the public from summer break.

Fountain across from Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace

Hyde Park Canadian Memorial for those who assisted Britain during WW2.

Bomber memorial for those who served on the Allied Forces during WW2 and lost their lives.

Bomber Memorial

Gift from a King circa 1700s. Open to the public for tours however not at 8am.

Breakfast at The Botanist

Wiling away time at The Botanist with an English milk tea, Scottish smoked salmon, scrambled eggs and sourdough toast. Yum! Had a lite breakfast on the plane which consisted of dry scrambled eggs, weird form of bacon that was more like athin slice of grilled pork and awful rendition of hashbrowns. I really don't think that airline food is an easy thing to master.