London, not at all off the beaten path

I had such a wonderful weekend in London, and didn’t have the chance to write a post because I had a business trip the week afterwards. Then I hesitated to share because I felt badly about the incident in London, which took place long after I had left. But I refuse to stay put and not travel at all, so I’d like to share some photos and tips.

We stayed at a hotel in Trafalgar Square, which is a busy part of town. The benefits are that you can really walk to most of what you’d like to see in a weekend, and the trains run extensively (but we didn’t use them). The disadvantage of staying there is that there is quite a bit of city noise (no surprise there!), and it is more challenging with luggage from the airports late at night or very early in the morning.

The food in London was much better than I thought it would be, and I now regret my negative recollection of British food, from a trip there 19 years ago! We didn’t have any meal that was bad, but we did try some perhaps “non-traditional” places, such as an Italian restaurant, the Jaimee Oliver place in Covent Garden, outstanding salads at “Pret a Manger” and a great snack at “All Bar One” at Leicester Square.

We went up in the eye, and I marveled at the engineering (can’t help it, daughter of an engineer!). We walked all over the first day, and took the hop-on-hop-off bus the second day. We enjoyed a beautiful choir concert at St. Martin in the Fields church, and admired the carriages at the royal stables.

We saw a couple having their wedding photos taken outside Westminster Abbey, and were curious about the building we saw behind the couple. While we were disappointed that churches, including St. Paul’s Cathedral, charged admission to view the interior, we were pleased that the building behind the couple being photographed was a high court with lovely architecture, and they allowed us to take a self-guided tour for free! 

There are many other areas of the UK to explore, but London is especially worth a weekend trip on a discount European carrier from  within Europe. Having lived in Germany for more than 2 years now, I just loved walking into a book store where everything was in English!!