London Bridge is Falling Down

So I know that it has been an embarrassing amount of time since I have posted about my summer back packing trip through Europe- but it still needs to be done! So be prepared to read all about when Lindsay and I were in London, England (last May).

Now if you read about my adventure in Dublin and how much of an adventure it was to take the ferry over to Wales then you would understand how happy we were to make it to Holyhead.

 once we made it to Holyhead, Wales we hopped on the rail and rode through Wales and into England. After riding through the Welsh countryside I was so sad that we didn't schedule time to stay and visit. We saw some of the most amazing scenery!

 This is Dunster Castle which is nestled right into the side of a hill. I was completely blown away when I saw it! Seeing this and the rest of the Welsh countryside made missing our original ride and sleeping in a ferry terminal the night before worth it (otherwise we wouldn't have been able to see this in the daylight!) 

 We stayed at St. Christopher's Hostel. This was the one location the entire trip where Lindsay and I actually shared a room with complete strangers. At first I was a little skeptical about who we would be paired with (in our all female dormitory) but we met the sweetest old Polish ladies.

These were our roommates. They were retired school teachers who were nannying in England and wanted to take a trip out to London. And for the record my experience was nothing like any of the horror stories people told me...









Here is Lindsay enjoying another one of our many meals. I'll admit we splurged a little with the Pringle's. But buying a loaf of bread and tub of peanut butter and making sandwich's every day saved us a ridiculous amount of money!

Here I am at Trafalgar Square standing with one of the famous lion statues. 

Above is Big Ben- and I learned that Big Ben is just the name of the bell inside that chimes, not the entire clock tower. It had so much more detail on it than I ever imagined it to have! I loved it!!!

 Lindsay and I in front of Buckingham Palace. The queen was inside so we weren't able to take a tour of it... but we met some of the nicest guards :)

 So all of the pictures before this were of our first two days in London. We had originally planned to do a bike tour where we would get to see most of the sites- but missing that ferry threw us off a day. Fat Tire Bike Tours was amazing and let us hop on a different tour the next day- but it wasn't the tour we'd planned for. We ended up getting to do the Royal Parks Tour which took us through several of London's ginormous parks! I'll admit that we wouldn't have taken the time or effort to go through the parks as extensively as the tour did so I'm glad we were able to get switched to that tour.

 Westminster Abbey (on the bike tour)

 After the tour was over there were still a few things we wanted to see that we hadn't gotten to yet- like Parliament, Big Ben, and the London Eye

 We also went through the London Tower. This is Tower Bridge. Now let me explain the pose. I stupidly thought this was London Bridge.... you know, London Bridge is falling down? So I'm holding it up. Then about 12 seconds after I take the picture I realize that this is Tower Bridge. So I took a normal picture. But this one is more fun :)

 The next morning we took a train ride out to Dover (note the white cliffs above) and the a ferry across the English Channel to get to Calais, France where we planned to take connecting train to Lilles and then to Paris.

This is us on top of out boat on the ferry ride over to France. The ride took about 2 hours and we later found out that the English Channel (from where we traveled) is only 20 miles wide!