I love London, always have
and probably always will. Living in Newcastle, pretty much as north as England
can get, I’ve always found it to be so much more exotic than my home town and
have been visiting a few times a year for work, shopping, or just a change of
scenery since I was about 15. Last week I had the all-important embassy
appointment at the American embassy. Now as we know, last week wasn’t exactly
perfect what with the being ill and the lots of work, but somehow my sleep deprived
self-managed to survive the 7 hour coach and get the visa stuff sorted.
My trips to London always
seem to be short but sweet, and this time I found myself in the capital for a
grand total of 24 hours. I’m being serious, that’s from getting off the coach
right through to getting back on the coach. Take off from that the 2 hours
spent at my appointment and a good 8 hours sleep, we’re down to a mere 14 hours
to eat, drink and be merry see the sights. Okay who am I kidding I was
merry and saw the sights.
Having such a short amount
of time I wanted to stay somewhere that was in easy distance from the coach
station, the embassy, having been to London many times before ease of
sightseeing wasn’t top of my list. After trawling countless websites trying to
find somewhere both affordable for a student, but not a hostel (I needed to get
a good night’s sleep!) I eventually found the Victoria Inn, in Victoria, for a
good price with reviews that didn’t sound too bad. Now I don’t know if my
expectations for hotels are really low, the last hotel I stayed in didn’t have
running water in the main building, or if previous reviewers were just harsh
critics but I was pleasantly surprised. The hotel was in a nice location, clean
and had friendly staff on reception 24/7, although the room was on the small
side there was plenty of space for the night and a bed each. A cooked breakfast
was also included in the price, a total novelty for this cheap skate traveller.
Our megabus arrived into
London at 15:00pm and we headed straight to the hotel to drop our things and
freshen up, before heading on out. Now I know most people would recommend
getting a tube pass if you’ve got such little time, but being on low student
budgets we opted to walk and I think we definitely still saw plenty.
We set off without any real
plans other than to make sure I knew the route to the embassy since I’m
brilliant at getting lost if I have a deadline. In true form, the half an hour
walk from our hotel to Grosvenor square took us nearer an hour, by which point
we just wanted to eat food and window shop, so we wandered along oxford street
played house in John Lewis (yup, that happened) and bought the most delicious coconut
and chocolate orange cookies from Ben’s Cookies. Seriously, why don’t we have
them up north?! 100% recommended.
After our playtime on Oxford
Street we strolled down past Piccadilly Market which was just closing but had
some cute and quirky things, through St James Park, just as the sun was setting
and up into Westminster where we of course got to admire the houses of parliament
and big ben. No matter how many times I visit London I still find myself
visiting Westminster just to look at the grandeur of the buildings.
After our afternoon exploring and sightseeing we ended up at Loco Mexicano, a small Mexican restaurant just a 5 minutes’ walk from our hotel in Victoria. As you’ll learn Mexican is definitely my favourite type of food, and to be honest nachos, fajitas or anything with salsa is instantly the way to my heart. The food was gorgeous, nachos and fajitas to share were devoured in minutes, it was cheap and had an offer on cocktails.. What more could we want?!
The next day after the
embassy appointment we met another of our friends and headed along to the south
bank. It was a beautiful spring day, and deceptively hot – I actually managed
to get sunburnt in the few hours we were out there! The south bank is another
of my favourite places to pass time when I’m in London. I love just wandering
along watching people bustling about their business and you can guarantee on a
gorgeous day there’ll be plenty to watch, from photo shoots and interviews to
street performers and bands, it’s all going on.
After enjoying the gorgeous
sunshine, eating ice cream and watching plenty of street theatre we headed back
to Victoria to pick up our bags and get a bite to eat at giraffe – yet again one
of my favourite restaurants and another chain I wish we had back home! By three pm, exactly 24 hours after I’d
arrived, I found myself hugging everyone goodbye and climbing back up the
stairs for another 7 hours on the coach back to Newcastle.
I had the most fantastic
couple of days, and it was brilliant just to get away and clear my head, add to
that the fact that my visa got approved (hello, America!) and I think I can say
it was one of the best trips I’ve had in a while. It reminded me that while we
quite often scoff at being a tourist somewhere we know, actually if you take
even just a little time to explore you can find excitement round even the most
familiar of corners.
