Travels with Boo: Two days in London, England and a few hours in Bruges/Brugge, Belgium

It's taken me a long time to finally settle down and write this post, for a few reasons.

One, it was the last big trip and I didn't want everything to end. Two, the terrorist attacks in Paris distracted me. Three, I'm now back in the United States dealing with jet lag/a really bad cold and a Boo unaffected by jet lag at the same time. Four, we hopped right back on a plane two days after landing in Cleveland to visit my family in California before Thanksgiving made plane tickets prohibitively expensive. I won't be able to visit for a long time after this (gotta build my vacation time back up), so I wanted to squeeze it in while I was still on a leave of absence.

And finally, I didn't have the greatest time in London and I don't want to be a Negative Nancy for those who do/did like London. Our frustrations stemmed mainly from transportation issues that significantly shortened our days for sightseeing, plus a Rugby World Cup that made London less Boo friendly, and more appropriate if John and I were there to drink and sightsee on our own. Another issue is that I had counted on a wifi signal in our B&B room to do some planning for sightseeing, which didn't pan out. So the trip wasn't very well lined up.

Plus, dude, London is EXPENSIVE. People said that about Paris but we were totally fine there. We took the train, the Metro, hit up museums, snacked, dined, and lots of other things in Paris, and it cost less than it did for us to take the train, the Tube, and eat two dinners (no real attractions) in London.

I digress. On to the actual trip. First, we had to get to London. A three hour drive to Calais, France straight from Cergy had us boarding the Eurotunnel with our car. It was extremely easy and straightforward. The ride took around 40 minutes.

When we arrived it was starting to get dark and we got to enjoy the whole, driving-on-the-left-side-of-the-road thing. I didn't think it was so bad, and actually preferred it for roundabouts.

We stayed in a small town called Charing, in a pub/B&B called The Bowl Inn. The hosts were pleasant, the food was good, and the wifi only worked in the restaurant. Charing is an hour outside London by train. Seeing as we had stayed the same distance away in France, we didn't think it was a big deal.

WRONG. Where it cost us like €21 to get to and from Paris each time, it cost over £75 to get to and from London each day. Yikes.

But we soldiered on and promptly got moving. We had purchased tickets for a hop-on, hop-off bus - our second mistake (the first being staying far outside of London). We walk so much that this ended up being a waste of money, especially since the company we used (Big Bus) stopped running at like 5pm, which is totally useless if you want to grab dinner and then go back to the train station. We ended up having to buy Tube tickets a few times anyway, also not cheap like Paris. If you want a bus tour, I recommend the Original London Tours, as they ran far more often and later. Live and learn.

Classic

For example, we didn't take the bus to Buckingham Palace, we just walked. It's decently far from the center of the city, but was easy for us.

It wasn't the official changing of the Guard, but Boo enjoyed it all the same.

Westminster Abbey has been the traditional place of royal coronations and burials of English and British monarchs for centuries.

Palace of Westminster

The Great Bell/Elizabeth Tower, aka Big Ben. The tower is part of Westminster Palace and holds the second largest four-faced chiming clock in the world (I was surprised to learn Minneapolis City Hall has the largest).

London Eye

Another huge waste (for us) was the London Eye, which is a giant slow-moving Ferris wheel that gives you a 360° view of London. It was like £100 for all of us, maybe more, and it was so smoggy/foggy you couldn't see crap. Do not recommend during the day.

All in all, London really reminded me of a more expensive Niagara Falls, with some more historical sites. I say this because there were booths everywhere advertising package deals to go into fun houses and other rides or an aquarium (just like

Niagara Falls) and it was weird.

We happened to be in London on Halloween. We had planned to search out a costume shop and let Boo pick out some fairy wings or something. No such luck. Around 6pm, we managed to finally find a gift shop selling cheap masks. Boo was happy as a clam with her Elsa mask and I only feel a smidge bad that she didn't have a legitimate costume.

And now, some fun with Snapchat's Halloween filters/Boo's other costume contenders:

Day 2 started off later than we would have liked. First, we weren't sure if we would get a return train to Charing station that night because the online chart wasn't terribly clear, so we missed a few trains until that was figured out. Then, at the train station, I realized I left the Big Bus receipt in my purse, and had decided to take my backpack that day instead. We couldn't use the bus without the receipt. In hindsight, we should have just gone in to London without the damn receipt. But we went back for it and wasted another two precious hours we could have been sightseeing. Sigh.

But we made it. Ended up taking the bus for maybe twenty minutes and then it shut down an hour or so later. Infuriating.

We missed the last Tower of London tour by like, five minutes. So we strolled along the Tower Bridge, got some food, and accepted that this hasn't been an ideal two days. At least we got some tasty fish and chips and meat pies out of the ordeal.

Tower of London. From Wiki: [The Tower] was founded towards the end of 1066 as part of the Norman Conquest of England. The White Tower, which gives the entire castle its name, was built by William the Conqueror in 1078, and was a resented symbol of oppression, inflicted upon London by the new ruling elite. The castle was used as a prison from 1100 (Ranulf Flambard) until 1952 (Kray twins), although that was not its primary purpose. A grand palace early in its history, it served as a royal residence.

And that was London. Maybe we will go again some day, but I wouldn't bet on it. I found it funny that I felt more comfortable in France or Belgium, where I barely speak the language.

Our return to Europe happened to fall on my birthday. Our Eurotunnel time was delayed a few hours (some kind of disturbance in France), so we hung out at the station, bought a "Where's Waldo?" book (in France, Waldo is named Charlie, Germany = Walter, England = Wally), and saw the phone charging stations pictured below. One has to pedal the bike to charge the phone. Pretty cool.

After an undisturbed trip back to Calais, we started on our drive back to Luxembourg. We decided to stop in Bruges, Belgium for lunch, and I fell in love. It was such a cute town. I wish we had more than a few hours to spare, but it was a little chilly and Boo whined about it the entire time we strolled the area. I did get some delicious hot dark chocolate to drink.