We landed in London slightly earlier than planned (around 11am) and breezed through security and customs. Having only experienced Australian and New Zealand customs before, I expected to be kept at the UK customs for a while. I was shocked when we walked through without any paperwork or forms, just two lines, one for nothing to declare, one for something. No questions asked, 10 minutes later (it’s a fair walk) we were on the tube.

First views of the suburbs of London from the train were rather clichéd, the housing was just like what I’d seen in movies and I actually found it all rather cute. My first experience on the tube was as expected, it got a little crowded as we approached London and we were worried we wouldn’t make it off in time with out suitcases, so we moved towards the doors a few stations earlier. We didn’t need to worry too much though, most of the crowd got off at Holborn Station (the stop before Russel Square).

We found the Royal National Hotel from the tube station without any problems and headed down to the Contiki Basement to get our documents checked/changed over. Once we’d done that we had to head back up the main reception to check in. It was before 2 but our room was ready and we were able to head straight up. After dropping all our stuff and relaxing for a while, we decided to hit the streets of London to keep ourselves awake until it was a more appropriate bedtime.

By London Winter standards, outside it was warm (at 11 degrees C) so I avoiding using my thermals to acclimatise a little (though I was freezing). We started by heading through Russel Square and in the direction of the British Museum, though I was trying to convince Simon to walk as far as the river…

	-Russell Square-

It didn’t take long before we’d reached the British Museum, it was larger than I had expected, I don’t really know why. From there we decided to try and find hot chocolates, we were freezing! Just down from the British Museum we found a reasonably priced place where the hot chocolates were only ₤1.70. If we converted that, it meant we were paying just over $4AUD, but we quickly learned not to convert the prices of food.

	-British Museum-

Thanks to our hot chocolates, we were thawing a little and decided to keep walking. Without consulting a map we continued to wander south away from the British Museum. At some point we must have taken a turn because we soon found ourselves in front of a massive building, consulting our maps we decided it must be a Mormon Temple and knew where we were. From there we headed in the direction of the river and the Waterloo Bridge.

My Lonely Planet had told me that the Waterloo Bridge was the best ‘first view of London’ view, so I was glad to be heading in that direction. Once we reached the bridge we had our first sights of the Houses of Parliament (Big Ben) and the London Eye, definitely a view to remember. Looking upstream we could also see the City of London and the famous Swiss Re building (The Gherkin).

-View from Waterloo Bridge-

We’d previously felt tired and cold, but seeing London’s famous landmarks gave us second winds and we decided to head around towards Westminster to get some better photographs. We wandered along the river bank taking photos, planning to head back but gradually worked out way closer and closer to Big Ben…

	-Big Ben across Thames-

As we approached Big Ben, taking more photos than humanly necessary, it was almost 4 o’clock. As the clock began to chime we were standing on the opposite side of the river, just near the Westminster Bridge. A few hundred (or so it seemed) photos later decided we’d taken enough of the Houses of Parliament to last us our whole trip…when the lights came on. Of course, it looked much prettier all lit up…so we took just a few more photos…

	-Big Ben with lights-

Since we’d already come so far, we decided to head across the bridge and into Westminster. It must be a testament to how untravelled I am, that I had never been near such a major tourist attraction. I was shocked to see how many other tourists were out in the cold (and almost dark) doing the same thing we were, taking photos. Everywhere you looked there were people taking and posing for photographs with the famous clock tower. I almost felt guilty that I was yet another tourist…

In Westminster we wandered past Westminster Abbey and headed in the direction of Trafalgar Square, luckily for us, it wasn’t difficult to spot. We wandered around Nelson’s Column taking even more photographs before deciding we should attempt to find dinner.

-Trafalgar Square-	-Nelson’s Column-	-National Gallery-

Again, deciding not to use a map we headed in the direction of Covent Garden, I’d read it was full of places to eat so finding dinner there shouldn’t be too difficult. We did get lost though, I’m still not sure exactly where but we ended up having to consult a map. Once we were in the heart of Covent Garden, we wandered into Neal’s Yard and found a cute little Italian Place that was warm inside and enjoyed an early dinner of pizza and pasta.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel and were given our first true taste of British weather, it was raining. Thankfully the walk back didn’t take us too long and we had our umbrellas with us. When we got back to the hotel it was just after 7pm and we’d both had good intentions to write in our journals and organise our things, however, once we sat down on our beds fatigue hit us and we decided to just head straight to bed.