The American Suburbanite in Rural England: The American Suburbanite In London

After our time in North Wales we headed down to London for a couple of days. We planned most of our activities for our short stay in advance as we were staying for such a short time and utilised our Tesco Club Card points to exchange for vouchers for attractions.

Rather than driving into the city we parked our car at Ebbsfleet International Station for the week. We figured this would be easier than navigating and we would be catching the Eurostar to and from Paris from Ebbsfleet as well.

We parked the car, grabbed our bags for London and took the train to our hotel. We stayed at the Danubius Hotel Regent Park and were glad to be a bit outside of the hustle and bustle of the city tourist attractions since we were in the middle of the summer school holiday. It did not take us long to get anywhere we needed by the tube and our feet are quite capable of walking as we so often do on holiday. The hotel was lovely and even had a door man dressed in tophat and tails. I am ashamed that I did not get a picture of him!

First stop was Madame Tussauds and although it was crowded we did not really have a problem getting in to see any of the figures. We had a lot of fun and a few people took pics of us posing with figures because of our crazy antics!

Mayor Boris Johnson

Russel Brand

After our time at Madame Tussauds, we walked about the city to Trafalgar Square where they have the official clock counting down the time to the 2012 Olympics. We are so excited to have tickets and there is a chance I could even see the American Womens soccer team play!

tick tock

Since we didn't climb on the lions (pressure washing) we headed towards Buckingham Palace. With the cycling trials held the previous day, the city was in fine form.

And seemed quiet and safe compared to the news reports the week prior regarding the riots. There was plenty of police presence all around the city as well.


(c) ASRE

After all of our walking, we built up an appetite, we walked to Covent Garden in search of an Italian resteraunt we had a meal on my first visit to the UK, but couldn't find it. Instead we stumbled upon a gem of a burger joint called Byron Hamburgers. These pictures do not do them justice, but trust me, they were FAB!

With a huge burger sitting on us, we did a bit more walking and stumbled upon M & M world

We were much to full to indulge in any chocolates, but we walked all 4 floors and could not believe how OTT the store was. It was like Disney in the middle of London, in fact the Down Town Disney M &M store is a hole in the wall compared to this store.