We made it to London, we’ve already made a full loop of the Golden Tours HOHO Blue Line, we grabbed Subway sandwiches at Victoria Station, ate them in our hotel room and are collapsed in bed at the Comfort Inn Buckingham Palace Rd. at 8pm. The alarm is set for 6:30am tomorrow, and we have a full day planned, albeit one where we’ll be dodging an anti-Brexit protest around Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus and Parliament.
And we’re off!
Except for the fact I slept only 1 hour 37 minutes (per Fitbit) on the plane last night, we had an easy travel day…at least until we got to Heathrow. My vegan dinner on the plane was delicious- garbanzo beans and rice in mild curry sauce- though breakfast was a little sketchy (six tiny slices of fresh fruit). We arrived to find London awash with sunshine, something I almost didn’t dare hope for. In fact, the weather looks fantastic all three days we’re here.
Walking 30 minutes from our gate to immigration felt great after sitting for hours, but we hit a snag at Heathrow immigration. We waited in line 1 hour 10 minutes start to finish, and then still had to claim our luggage, pass through customs (a non-issue) and find our way to the National Express bus station. I’m so glad we didn’t pre-purchase our bus tickets; I probably would have reserved an 11:15am bus and we definitely would have missed it. Instead we purchased them in the station for £20 total (about $26). As we were boarding our bus to Victoria Coach Station, I looked at my watch. It was exactly 3 hours after we had landed, prompting G to joke, “These London sites are great!”.
Finally, though, we arrived at the bus station, the same one where we’ll catch the Princess shuttle on Sunday morning. And from there it was less than a 5 minute walk to the Comfort Inn Buckingham Palace Rd. The location was perfect, but the hotel itself remained to be seen. Our room is very small, as is the bathroom, but the mattress is heaven (very firm) and the room is spotless. We are located right next to the train tracks from Victoria Rail Station, but the clickety clack of the wheels is almost like a sound machine.
Our room was ready when we arrived at 2pm and we scrubbed up and then collapsed on the bed and napped for about an hour. That gave us just enough energy to walk around the corner to the Golden Tours office and trade our London Eye ticket for today for one tomorrow. We caught the very last blue loop bus of the day and saw the primary tourist sites from the upper level of a double decker bus. Friday rush hour traffic was intense, but, as we finished our narrated tour, the sunset cast a golden glow on all those historic buildings and the city was just beautiful.
The iconic Queen Victoria statue in front of Buckingham Palace
Westminster Abbey 
Trafalgar Square 
St. Paul’s Cathedral
Tower Bridge over River Thames
The Tower of London
The London Eye...we were going to ride it around sunset but decided to wait until tomorrow. Once back at Victoria Station, we purchased our sandwiches and returned to our hotel in the dark. We were suddenly simultaneously extremely famished and intensely tired, so we quickly ate and G was asleep in 17.2 seconds. I’ll soon be following him.