Honeymoonin: England (Part 2)
- Pat
- Feb 18, 2018
- 4 min read
After Jazzing our way out of the airport, our slow, adrenaline filled car ride took us to East Putney where we stayed for our first night. East Putney is just southwest of London and only a quick tube ride into the city center. The hotel was a small, newly renovated hotel called "The Lodge" with a super helpful concierge. After the stressful drive, we were eager to be any place that didn't have 4 wheels so it worked out great. Even though we spent almost 3 days in England I'll try to get this down to 7 bullets!
1) The food: not as bad as everyone says. Fish and Chips is a real thing and it's f##king incredible. We ate our first meal at The Red Lion and it was the best fish fry I've ever had in my life. The "chips" are really just bland french fries and the fish fry is usually served with "mashy peas". I've always felt very strongly that peas are the worst vegetable of all time, however, the mashy peas were so good I ALMOST convinced myself to let peas back into my life. Almost. Point is, the Fish and Chips were good every time we got it and whenever we varied from that dish (which wasn't often) we usually had good food. Just ask Allie about her fried pickles at The Draft House...
2) The "touristy spots" in London are touristy but you need to go anyway. From watching men in funny hats march back and forth at Buckingham Palace, to walking around Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster, London has some really cool architecture unlike anything we'd ever seen. Trafalgar Square even had some incredible live music that we stopped to enjoy. There's just history nearly everywhere you go and every single building seemed to have story behind it. We found that most of these spots are conveniently walk-able from one another, so you can hit a good majority of the popular places in one ambitious day of walking. 32,000 steps for those counting. #TeamFitBit
4) The London Bridge was amazing except that it's not the London Bridge... That image below is of the Tower Bridge, which we discovered after Siri navigated us to a bridge that looked very... ordinary. That's when we realized that Tower Bridge is the one that you should be looking for. Still, the view of the Tower Bridge from the London Bridge was nice so we pretended like the stop was part of our itinerary. We also got a beautiful birds eye view of the bridge and all of London from this really amazing restaurant called Oblix, in the not-so-elegantly named The Shard. The Shard is actually the tallest building in the UK and thefood was amazing. (I think this was a rare time we strayed from the fish & chips.) Definitely our most expensive meal, but I would highly recommend stopping here. Even if you don't want to splurge on dinner, take the ride up for drinks. There are a few other restaurants located in The Shard as well depending on what you're into!
5) The public transportation in London was amazing. Even though a lot is walk-able in London, getting back to our B&B or getting across town was incredibly easy. The Tube, apart from being super fun to say. was very clean and easy to figure out. After staring at the tube map briefly, a local English woman saw our dumbfounded stares and decided to show us the ropes, t'was "easy peasy" from there. You can pay per trip via cash or load up one of their Oyster cards and it's significantly cheaper. They also have double decker "hop-on hop-off" buses EVERYwhere so to make a long story short, do not drive in London. Also, Uber was kicked out of London shortly after our trip in favor of these black taxis which our Uber driver at the time promptly put "are expensive as shite". Check out this article for some more info: https://www.visitlondon.com/traveller-information/getting-around-london/london-tube
6) Pubs are the best places of all places. If you're looking for good food, ambiance, and beer just type "pub" into google maps and pick the closest one. One thing to be aware of is that some beers are served at "room temp-ra-chta". I ordered a red ale (which I usually love) and it came warm and flat. After attempting to take the beer back thinking I got the last pour before kicking the keg, I was quickly humbled in learning London serves quite a few beers like this. Wasn't my cup of tea and definitely could not have looked more American trying to swap my beer, but hey, when in London.
7) Some final tips/thoughts that you could probably find with a quick google search.
-You will definitely need to bring an electrical outlet converter, maybe even two, because there are two types of outlets in the UK (and there is a good chance your wife will leave one somewhere). This one will work great: Samsonite Travel Universal Adapter.
-A raincoat is an obvious must. Sunshine seemed to be a rare commodity in England, but luckily, we only got just a sprinkle or two.
-Everyone we met was SUPER helpful, so don't worry about asking people for advice or directions if you need it.
It was tough to squeeze our itinerary into less than 3 days so giving yourself a couple extra days would really let you explore London the right way. We didn't get a chance to do any museums, or shows, which we will definitely check out when we return. All in all, London was an awesome leg of our trip, and even though we just had a short time there, we both swore on making a return trip sometime in the future. So keep an eye out for ENGLAND PART TWO!!