London

London proved to be quite a change from Iceland, and with good reason as it has 5 times the population of Reykjavik and a much longer history!

We arrived at London Heathrow airport around mid day and managed to successfully navigate the public transit system to two separate destinations.  Our first stop was in central London, near Leicester Square, where we picked up our London Passes which would be our key to several of the most popular tourist spots over the next two days. The second stop was our hotel, the Hilton Docklands Riverside, which required a combination of subways and busses to reach.  The hotel was made up of several buildings that used to be part of the busiest port in the world and have since been renovated to make a nice hotel and conference center right on the shores of the river Thames. After checking in, we ventured across the river to the canary wharf area of London where we visited a museum and had dinner. 

 

Day two started off with another trip to central London and a visit to the Burroughs Market. The number of people packed into such a small area to buy fruit, veggies, bread, meats and other various goods was astonishing.  From there we walked across the London Bridge, visited the London Tower, toured the Tower Bridge and walked around the very impressive St. Paul's Cathedral.

 

The weather turned nasty on day three but we were determined to see a few more sights before we left. Our first stop was the pier in Greenwich where we caught a City Cruises boat up the river towards Westminster.  The boat tour was not at all what we had envisioned and we were glad to get off. We saw the house of the parliament and Westminster Abbey before heading towards Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately it started to downpour as soon as we arrived so we took a couple of pictures and hightailed it towards the nearest tube station.  We took this opportunity to book our travel to Ireland and enjoy a couple of ales in a local pub.  We finished our day with a wonderful dinner at an Italian restaurant called Zizi across the river from our hotel before hitting the sack for a long day of travel.

Our commute to the train station via the public transit system was the craziest yet as we joined thousands of Londoners on their way to work on a Monday morning.  Julie and I crowding on to overflowing subways with two backpacks each was quite the sight, and I'm sure an annoyance to the rest of the passengers.