When my sister and I got back to London from Amsterdam, it was my sister's turn to have a total meltdown. The hotel we were scheduled to stay at was, how shall I say? Icky. It was in a good neighborhood, right next to the east end of Hyde Park, and the lobby was newly remodeled. But the room? Small, cramped, and dirty. The hallway gave an indication of this when we noticed the door moldings appeared to have been gnawed on by rats.
YUCK.
My sister was still in the throes of sickness, and absolutely LOST HER MIND. She stated, I'M NOT STAYING HERE EVEN ONE NIGHT. THIS PLACE IS GROSS! She called her LA boss immediately(it was early evening in London, early morning in LA), told her about the squalid conditions, and even took photos with her phone to send to her boss to show that she wasn't exaggerating. So if you get reservations for a hotel near Hyde Park that rhymes with "cummerbund", change said reservations IMMEDIATELY.
Luckily her boss is awesome and quickly switched our lodgings to a place that's on the western edge of Hyde Park on Kensington High Street. This place was fancy, but not in the same fancy way that our Amsterdam hotel was fancy. This place was understated modern British fancy.
It was so fancy, rich Arabs were staying there. THAT'S PRETTY DAMN FANCY, PEOPLE.
We were so damn happy, we celebrated in style:
In the morning, I enjoyed the view of Hyde Park from our hotel room window:
And when I looked to the left, I see...Kensington Palace!
My sister was too tired to come out and do stuff, so I was left to amuse myself.
After another ridiculously delicious British breakfast, I went out to take photos of me in front of Kensington Palace:
Then I wandered through Hyde Park. From there I wandered east and covered a great deal of Very Central London. I should go to googlemaps and see if I can map my route and get a mileage reading. My feet say I walked a LOT.
On my way back to the hotel, I found Royal Albert Hall:
And an Albert statue, right across the street from RAH:
And I had to get a photo with an iconic phone booth:
Later in the day my sister was finally feeling well enough to do something, so I took her to Camden. I went there with former ACDG skater Bette Noir before we went to Amsterdam, and got a quick tour of the place. This time, I got to linger a bit more with my sister in tow. It was fun!
Camden canals:
We also did some wandering on Kensington High Street. This is the only photo I got of my sister the entire trip, and it was akin to pulling teeth from a wolverine to get it:
The day of our departure I wanted to go to the Harley dealer in London to get the Dear Husband a shirt. I took an arbitrary LONG walk to get there, and on my way I spotted this:
The house where Benny Hill used to live!
I managed to get lost on the way back to the hotel, which freaked me out since I was cutting it very close timewise to finish packing and get going to the airport.
Oh, I walked across Tower Bridge. Not on the last day I was there, but here are the pix anyway:
Every time I look at my vacation photos, I want to go back SOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH.
2 comments:
Your posts make me desperately want to go back to London. I could easily spend a month there (except for that pesky money thing).
I hope you can come back when Im here and do more stuff with you!! so much to see....paris is mighty cool too and only 2 hours on the train....
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