As I got outside, it was cold! I was only wearing a t-shirt and my swimming team jacket, and I was freezing. My hands still a bit painful now. I thought it was a hot summer day in London, and I had never been so wrong. My dad said it was a sunny and usual hot day. Yeah, "hot".
So then we took the tube to Green Park, and changed line till we reached Victoria Station. The station is beautiful, but the buildings surrounding the station, are far more beautiful. I totally love it. I was like, 'Gosh I really want to live here!' There are some art and historical blend of sight, and it is marvelous.
As we started to look for the hotel, we stumbled upon some old but nicely-maintained buildings, and a poster says that Winston Churchill lived in one of them. Nice fun facts though, you can see the purple banner if your eyes are keen enough.
There are plenty of hotels near the Victoria Station. We booked ourselves Airways Hotel, and it was not hard to find. It is a small hotel, yes, but it's clean, and that's most important. We put our luggage there and start going around London on this Big Bus.
Big Bus has 4 different routes: Blue, Green, Red, and Purple. Blue and Red basically have the same routes, but Red route provides real life guide, and if you wanna go to Harrods, you'll have to take the Blue Route. For adult it's £30, for 24 hours hop in-hop off bus around London, and free river cruise in Thames. Just remember to show the driver your yellow ticket, and you're on the go. The buses are like open double-deck buses. The wind was quite cold, even it was summer, so I wear my scarf and jacket. There are plenty of buses so don't worry if you miss one, there will be another for about 10 to 20 minutes.
Before we start the tour, we bought some salads and juice from M&S Simply Food store. My dad loves the 3-bean salad with a mint vinaigrette, and I was reluctant to try, so I bought this and squeezed orange and carrot juice. He bought more cakes for the day. We hopped on from Victoria, next to The Governor Hotel, and it's blue line bus, so you can take a free headphones, and go to the second deck, plug in, and enjoy your 8-languages-commentaries. BTW Big Bus advised us to take the headphones with us when we leave, and I saw an old lady took like 5 plastics LOL. The only flaw in this is that the comments are not GPS-based. So sometimes, the comments are too fast. For instance: "Now look on your left, there's a Roman-Catholic church bla-bla-bla" but the church is still blocks away.
We decided to go around London first, then stop at Buckingham Palace. We saw the Marble Arch, Green Park, Hyde Park, Harrods, Oxford Street, Big Ben, River Thames, London Bridge, etc. I really love London's old buildings. It seems like every corner every streets have their own style so I took a lot of blurry photographs because the bus was moving and it was kinda hard to take.
We hopped off at Paddington, and ate our lunch there. There are some Indian or Italian restaurants near the station, but I always wanted to try fish 'n chips. It's the same fried fish like in Jakarta, but just add some fries and voila, you have fish and chips hahahahaha. After we ate the lunch, we sat at a nearby park and we saw this bunch of people sleeping on the grass, absorbing the sunlight. We ate the salad on the bench, with the pigeons accompanying us. What a peaceful moment.
We then went again on the Big Bus, drove around London, and stopped near the Clock Tower. Crossed the bridge and found many street 'magicians', and this bagpipe player. I have always have this strong feeling toward bagpipe, I don't know whether toward bagpipe only or the Scottish. We crossed the river with the ferry tour, and the driver + guide showed us around the Thames. Dropped off near the castle, we hopped on again on the bus, but this time, the red bus. I think it is far better than the recorded commentary, the guides are funny and warm, and I enjoyed the tour. Arriving near the Buckingham Palace, where HM Queen lives, but she currently away, so they only have two guards. I always thought that the guards are tall, slim, and have this mustache like in the Mr. Bean TV series LOL. But they still look like in their twenties, and one of these guards keep shouting, 'KEEP OFF THE FENCE', or something like that in every 5 minutes. BTW Buckingham Palace, gosh, so crowded, packed full of people.
Anyway, we looked for dinner, and the hotel receptionist recommend us this wonderful Indian Curry named Spicy World (I thought it was Spicy War when I first heard the receptionist said it) My dad only wanted to order lamb curry, but the steward keep pushing us to order the most expensive dish in the menu. It was excellent actually, but I think it would be better if you just leave choosing the what we want to us, just saying though. We end up paying for like £50 or more.
We turned in early for the night, cause we were going to Northampton and Manchester the next morning.
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