I was Waiting for a Cross-town Train in the London Underground...

Well day 1 in London is over! And by day 1 I really mean just the night because we didn't really go out into the city until around 6ish after rolling in and everyone passed out asleep (which is when I snuck away to blog earlier) and we headed out towards the river, specifically in search of the London Eye because we were not planning on going on it while we were here and it is not on our walking tour's list of things to see for tomorrow. As we walked we saw a slice of the city that started out being like Broadway in NY, changed into Chinatown, then started getting progressively more awesome (and more British!)

We continued on and then got to Leicester Square where around 6 roads converged and on each corner was a different restaurant so we crossed from corner to corner looking at menus until we decided to eat at a place called Spaghetti House (Yep... Italian in England. Oh well.) which was really delicious. Also, I stopped into a real English red phone booth to call home from. Only I didn't want to pay so I used Sharon's blackberry inside it. Also nobody picked up at home so I didn't really talk to anyone, but I left a voicemail. Oh well. After eating our meal we headed back towards the water, and after a little while of walking all of a sudden Big Ben jumped out from behind some buildings on the left. That was a pretty awesome moment, we were just kind of cruising through London like "Yeah, this is pretty cool..." when just bam - woah guys, this is London!

We ran around all giddy taking pictures of the area (seriously, this is London!) and then got to the River and saw the London Eye across the way. We crossed the bridge and headed over to the Eye, which actually closed as we were walking there. We checked it out, it was pretty cool. The view became really cool too because it was getting dark the whole time but now the lights all turned on by the time we got across and everything looked awesome. We walked down past it to another bridge sight seeing before heading back over the bridge (I think it was the Waterloo Bridge? Or maybe that was the next one over because it was a train and footbridge and I don't know if it was on the map or not because it was not a car bridge.

So we are back at the Hostel now and are excited for tomorrow which is shaping up to be a busy day. We are going on a walking tour of the city to hit all the major sights (and since it is the same group that did the Edinburgh one, and it's free, we totally expect it to be awesome) and we are possibly hitting the London Eye since you can get a pretty decent priced combo ticket for the Eye and the London Madame Tussades (why not?) and we are going to meet up with Dave's friend Claire who lives outside London and is going to show us around as well. And at night we have a host of options we are debating between, such as the Sherlock Holmes Museum, the Tate, etc. So it's gonna be a good day!

Tune in next time - same Pat time, same Pat channel! Cheers!