We caught a train over to London from Paris, 2.5 hours on Eurostar. And spent a day and a half exploring London before catching a flight to Croatia. We stayed at a small hotel just blocks away from enormous Hyde Park. London was quite different but also very similar to the US at the same time. Just walking down the streets, it was a little surprising to see businesses such as Blockbuster, Subway and even a LA Fitness. We had a few close calls crossing the crosswalk by not expecting cars coming from the opposite direction, and it seems like every other car on the street is a Mini Cooper.
On our one full day in London we decided to do a walking tour with Sandeman's New London Tour. The tour was 4 hours long and free. The way it works is you just have to tip the guide. And we had an awesome guide, Ed, who made everything even more interesting and pleasant to listen to with his English accent. Check them out, they have free tours in a lot of big European cities (Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, etc).
We had a chance to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, which happens every other day. There wasn't much to see, except for guys all dressed up playing instruments, riding horses and walking around in sync. But it was packed with tourists and hard to even see what was going on (see picture below). Ed, our tour guide, shared a few stories of people breaking into the Palace, most recently at Prince William's 21st birthday party.
Julia and I spent some time doing some exploring on our own, photographed some London fashion and even managed to see the Les Miserables musical in the evening. Which happened to be celebrating it's 25th year anniversary as the longest running musical ever. The entire theatre sang "happy birthday". Overall, London is a great city and I wish we had more time to spend there... and more money, everything is very expensive, even when the pound is not doing so well.
-Yuriy
