Who Needs the Hop on Hop Off (London, England)

We were finally on our way to London, after being stuck at the  Barcelona airport for 8 hours. The flight over wasn't too bad, and passed quite quickly. It was a beautiful day out.

We flew from Barcelona to London Stansted with Ryanair. Although the flight was delayed over 8 hours, we still tend to book with Ryanair, as they have some of the cheapest flights we have seen.



We booked our hotel "Ramada" in the Docklands with Expedia. It was the best deal we could find for three people together.

During the flight the guy in front of us heard our foreign Canadian accents and gave us all kinds of tips on places we could go in London. He had a West Ham United top on so it wasn't surprising he was telling us about when we could see a West Ham United match. He said there was an exhibition match we could see for cheap. He gave us some tips on where we could go to get some authentic cockney pub food. It was nice of him to give us all the tips but we had some plans already.

We flew into Stansted, London, and took a National Express coach bus to Victoria. It was about an hour ride. Once we got to Victoria we grabbed some food at Pret A Manger and headed to the tube station. Our hotel was in the Docklands, so we had a couple transfers to get to the hotel.

We put down our stuff and got ready. My uncle met us at the hotel and we headed out for dinner.

It was a fine evening for a walk. We walked towards the restaurants in the docklands.

We weren't sure where we were going to find vegan food but it turned out to be no problem. We ate dinner at a Lebanese place in the docklands called Al Masar. It was really great food. After dinner we went on the Emirates Line which is a London cable car. It was a wonderful way to see London at night.

Afterwards we said goodbye to my Uncle and we took the tube back to the hotel. We were all exhausted so we went to sleep to get well rested for touring London. Since our flight to London was so delay we had 8 hours less time to see London but we wanted to make the most of it.

The next morning we took a "hop on hop off bus" map and made up our own route to show Mom the best of the city using the tube.

We started with taking the tube back to Victoria station.

We walked to Buckingham Palace which is something you have to see if you haven't before. The guards were changing so it was extremely busy. We tried to get in there but it  was hard fighting the crowd.

Afterwards we jumped back on the tube and headed to the Palace of Westminster to see Big Ben. Big Ben is the name of the bell in the clock tower which is the Elizabeth Tower.

It was a little overwhelming around the UK parliament since there was two different protests going on at the same time. It was hard to tell what the protests were about exactly without getting right in there.

St. Margaret's Church

We took a quick look at the other buildings in the area as there is a lot to see.

We left Big Ben and walked to the London Eye another well known tourists sight in London.

There is usually huge queues to get on the London Eye. It was about 40 minutes for us to get on which wasn't that bad.

It was a beautiful day for sight seeing. We bought tickets for the London Eye river cruise and we able to get on the boat right after the London Eye.

The cruise took us up the river Thames and the guide pointed out all the most famous sights along the Thames. He told us a little bit of trivia about each of the buildings and the bridges.

We saw St. Paul's Cathedral among other sights along the Thames.

London Bridge is the most boring looking bridge. There has been a bridge there since Roman times. A lot of people mistakenly think that Tower Bridge which is much more interesting looking is London Bridge.

That interesting bridge is Tower Bridge. That's the one that lots of tourists think must be London Bridge.

The river cruise was a lovely way to see London. We cruised past The Tower of London which is a cool castle you can go inside.

We went under Tower Bridge and the circled back to the London Eye.

The Shard

After the cruise we crossed the bridge and walked to Soho. We were on search for London's only vegetarian and vegan pub Norman's Coach & Horses.

Drinks! Pimm's Lemonade.

We had Tofush and chips!!

Food was amazing, we will most definitely be back. We all had Tofush and chips.

After dinner we went to the half price Leicester Square Box Office and bought tickets to The Commitments. The play was a lot of fun. The cast were great singers. No trip to London is complete without seeing a show in the West End. It was showing at the Palace Theatre.

Lovely old theatre

Once the show ended we took the tube back to the hotel for the night.

Check out was 11am, we woke early and got ready for our journey to Gatwick. We took the train to Gatwick airport and hired a taxi to take us to the hotel. (It was a Mercedes Benz)

We checked into our hotel, and asked what there was around to explore.. turns out we were in the middle of nowhere.

We had lunch in the hotel. It was a golf club. We were able to get the spicy bean burgers made vegan.

Relaxing.

Sorbet

We decided to go out exploring outside anyway, turns out there was not a lot to explore. Our hotel was so creepy. It is a part and fly hotel so there were tons of cars there but barely any guests staying in the hotel. We wandered around the empty hotel for awhile. We couldn't stop think of the hotel in The Shining. 

Hotel lobby.

Once we were done exploring we headed back to the room and watched some TV.

The next morning we got up at 5:30, and took Mom back to Gatwick airport and she flew home. We took a train to London and then took the Mega Bus back to home to Birmingham. We decided to take the Megabus home from London, as it is still relatively cheap last minute compared to the trains.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this post and want to see more of London, check out our post on "Vegan Youtuber Meet-up and Camden Town, London"