Clifton and I had quite a stressful travel to London after they displayed our flight on the screen as already gone when we had waited for two hours to board and then found out it was delayed by an hour and the screen just had a typo. Then we arrive at Heathrow airport and wait for our luggage for 45 minutes at the baggage claim. After we get our luggage we take a 45 minute train ride to the hotel which decided to close for three days and failed to inform us. By this time it is 1:30am and we are exhausted but find out that our hotel that decided to close over Christmas is sending us to a five star hotel to stay for our entire trip. We also got upgraded to a King deluxe room. Let's just say there is no way Clifton and I could have afforded this room had the Radisson not had a slight oversight. Yeah for us! London started out with a bang.
Our first day in London was spent doing a little shopping, going to see Wicked the musical in the West End, and then of course Pub hopping. The streets were beautifully decorated for Christmas and there was so much to see. Clifton and I both loved Wicked. Yes Clifton loved the musical but I don't know if he really wanted me to put that statement in the blog. :) The Pubs in London are exactly the kind of atmosphere Clifton and I love. They all had great food, beer selections, and laid back environment that made you want to stay all day and night! That night we walked through Hyde Park where they were having a Winter Festival with rides, food, craft booths and much more. We of course fell in love with the Bailey's and hot chocolate drink on a cold Christmas Eve night that they were serving at the festival. On Christmas day we decided since everything was closed we would just do a walking tour of the whole city. We walked all over seeing Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Parliament, Big Ben, Trafalgar Square etc.... I would say we walked 10 miles that day. That is the best way to see the city. We also went to mass on Christmas day at St. Pauls Cathedral. It was very surreal and an amazing experience for both Clifton and I. On December 26th we walked through Hyde Park and stopped to feed a few squirrels some peanuts and then continued on to Notting Hill. Notting Hill was a very cute area and they had a massive street market on Portabella street. That night we went on a Jack the Ripper walking tour through the streets of London. Fascinating story about Jack the Ripper but would not recommend it to someone during December because it lasted two hours and we were frozen by the time we were through with it. Our tour guide was this adorable old man who seriously knew everything there is to know about all history not just London's. We seriously thought we were on the wrong tour for the first thirty minutes because of the tangents he went off on about London's history that had nothing to do with Jack the Ripper. Regardless, we did learn a lot about London history. The next day we went on a tour through the Tower of London and that night we ate dinner at Gordon Ramsay's restaurant MAZE. By the way the food and service stunk. Extremely disappointed and expected a lot more from Hell's Kitchen's chef.
All in all we fell in love with London and had an amazing Christmas. We definitely missed our families but we were kept busy with all the new sights to see.
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