Day 2 - London Touring

Day 2 - London Touring #westhighlandway2024

Today woke up at 10ish completely dead to the world, apparently a spam call woke Farah up at midnightish on my phone and I had no idea. Took us a bit to get going and had another mid coffee/croissant at a different place, not the best street so far

Doing basic Bus touring today to look around without having to necessarily burn out our walking feet but generally a go with the flow day.

In Picture of tour style for reference, tried to get a live guide bus at 1 but barely missed it because there's a bus called the "Oxford Tube" but we mistakenly went into the subway entrance with the same name as the bus stop and even with a taxi after missed it by a few mins

Ngl that bummed me out a bit but we decided to reschedule to the 4pm and went on the Thames cruise thing instead, walked from where we missed the start through... Yep, a park. Big Ben for scale.

Alright time to wrap up the day after a bit of a delay. We got to the ferry thing that took us from Westminster Pier to the Tower of London. It was a pretty fun little ride with the classic tour guide narration which borders on the cringe but they make it work

From there we saw the Tower of London from the outside but it seems interesting, might go do a full tour Sunday or something. Despite the name it's one of the first stone castles in England started almost 1000 years ago... Love old buildings...

As an aside in the gift shop we saw his book and all I could think of was what did Paddington do to get sentenced for treason...

I don't know what happened to it the button to let me add replies to a thread before hitting post but it's gone and it makes multi post updates a huge slog now... Hate this hell website.

Anywho, took the hop on bus back to catch the one with a live guide because I'm sorry but those audio clips they have on the standard bus are not great. The panoramic tour as they called it was packed as you can in the first pic. Arrest were during the tour

Passed by the Canada House, NOT an embassy because it's in the Commonwealth, a High Commission instead.

Some more photos. The guide was of a similar mold as the other one but older and wiser, with the classic jokes and time fillers interspersed among interesting facts and points of interests I might otherwise have missed, again corny but exactly what the situation called for

Sort of unrelated other than I did see them a lot but the architecture and presence of parliament and big ben are really nice, leaves an impression for sure. One extra shot of St Margaret's at the end

Yes skies are always gray, London London London!

After he tour went to a Sichuan place nearby that was pretty tasty, had some mapo tofu and crispy duck wraps before.we headed back to the hotel to call it a day as tomorrow waking up earlier to meet a friend of hers near Windsor Castle (1+ hours away) and her cousins later

Alright that's it for now other than the mattress at the hotel being incredibly beyond what I would consider firm. Good night!

Feel like the timeline undercounts my walking vs my phone counter