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| Tower Bridge, 2023 |
London was never one of my top picks for the Before 30 list, however Shane told me he enjoyed his short layover in London while he was traveling, so I figured it was a good destination to go to on our first trip away together.
We planned a short trip to London for New Years in 2019. Pre-pandemic, the 'before times' if you will. We stayed in a luxurious 4 star hotel in the center of London, near Tower Bridge so we would be close to a couple of attractions.
Before going, we purchased a thing called 'London Pass', I think it goes by something else now. The pass included tickets to some top attractions such as the Big Bus, London Eye, Madame Tussauds and Sea Life.
At the time, we hadn't yet established how we would plan out our trips. We went to London as part of a wider trip from Birmingham. Shane was spending Christmas in Birmingham with his family, so I met him there, and took a train from Birmingham to London to see out the New Year.
We were only going to be there for a few days to celebrate my birthday, which falls on New Year's eve.
On the first day, we dove into our London pass. We decided to go on the Big Bus to kick it all off. We headed to the closest bus we found, QR codes loaded up on our phones, and tried to board. The bus driver was horrible.
Now - I make a point about being empathetic with folks who act rude to me, especially in situations like this. You know, thinking things like "Oh, he might just be having a bad day". This was one of those times where I was wasting my empathy on a rude man. Plain and simple.
To lay it out: we got on the bus with our QR codes, having established we should be able to scan them on the bus itself. There was no rep at the bus stop, as we later learned there usually is, and on boarding the bus not only were we denied to board, but the bus driver was snarky at us, saying we should print out the QR code on paper and stop wasting his time.
See ya Big Bus driver.
Our next action was to head out to the furthest attraction from where we were in the city first: Madam Tussauds. I was thinking we could also hit up the zoo too, as it was nearby.
...
We arrived in Madam Tussauds, dilly dallying through our day. We stood in a long queue, in the cold, shuffling in until we scanned our QR codes and boarded a giant elevator.
The place itself was nice, and the concept is cool but perhaps I just don't get it, whatever it is, that makes a wax museum an attraction. Like, even when we were there - everyone was basically falling over us. The statues were nice, like I said it was cool, but every statue we went to, someone else was on our heels, trying to take pictures with and get up close to the statue, skewing our view and opportunity to take any photos.
The highlight for me was a section of the experience where you are led into a panic chamber, with blaring alarms, similating an alien invasion - lights flashing, intercom repeating a warning. Very SCI FI. Just as you leave the chamber, it gets to a box-shaped entryway, leading to the next experience. In the corner of the entryway, there was a very life-like figure of the alien from Alien holding onto the walls, jumping out from one of the corners of the small space you had to walk through. I felt ACTUAL FEAR walking through that part, people in front of me were crawling and ducking as it jumped out and I ran past so fast and didn't look back. In hindsight, it was so well done I wish I had taken a video of it.
...
After the wax museum, we found ourselves across the road, figuring out our next steps.
The zoo was closed for next entry at 4:30pm, it was already past 4pm and it was unlikely we would make it there in time.
We headed back to the city and sat in a large area nearby an ice rink behind the Tower of London. Admittedly, it was one of the highlights of the trip, just sitting there, enjoying the skaters whisking around effortlessly, with not a worry in mind.
That evening, we went to establish a game plan for the next few days, only to find London zoo was closed until the New Year, we didn't have access to a printer for the Big Bus and we agreed to go on the London Eye on New Years eve, for my birthday.
With little else to do except walk around and soak in the city, Tower Bridge sitting in front of us, the river and God knows what else we got looking at, we decided to have dinner in a cute restaurant along the river. It was all done in fairy lights, adding this wonderful magic to the air, but it was a more elegant restaurant (sort of). It was the first time I encountered a place, like a restaurant, that was a direct contradiction of itself.
I'll explain: when you enter a 'fancy' restaurant, you know it's a fancy restaurant, right? So this place, while portraying a fancy facade i.e. the waiters were all suited and booted, the clientele were following a dresscode and ethic that matched one of a more elegant establishment. (We felt out of place big-time.) However, the staff were less elegant than one would have expected, and the food just didn't line up with a fancy place at all.
You learn a little something when you're out and about. From this I learned two things: I don't enjoy fancy restaurants. They expect too much from me: to be well dressed and to eat what I'm given. Also, attitude plays a big role in everything you do.
I'll explain further. So we get to this amazing restaurant, they have set the scene perfectly: I was taken in by the magical lights, I felt the need to be well dressed, I pulled out my best table manners and I honestly felt like I was disturbing a beautiful arrangement of napkins and delph by sitting at my seat. THEN, the wait staff came over, and Shane requested something non-dairy from the menu. The waiter had two choices here: she could take notice that this is a dietry requirement, gather all the information she could re the menu and come back to Shane, or she could lie and tell him there was no dairy in a brioche bun. She chose the latter.
And she would continue to choose the latter, even when Shane points out there is dairy in the bun, according to the menu. Attitude changes everything.
Now, moving on instead of ranting.
The remainder of the trip was something else - one thing after another fell through until we found ourselves out and about on New Years eve, closer to evening than afternoon, and we were heading across the bridge to go to McDonalds. Shane asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday, and that's what I wanted.
At first, I pulled out my Google Maps and started bringing us to the "nearest" McDonalds, only to find ourselves further and further away from the buzz of the tourists and closer to the outskirts, where shady, dank-smelling fellows seemed to dwell. Saying little more about that, eventually myself and Shane started feeling really uncomfortable that we decided to walk all the way back. The closest McDonalds in the opposite direction almost an hour away on foot.
We were happy to get back to the main area near one of the bridges. We had made a plan to head back to the area we were hanging out the previous days, watching the skaters on the ice rink, as there was a McDonalds near there.
On walking back, however, we got to London Bridge and started making our way onto the bridge when a random person stopped us and told us the bridge was closed. Shane looked at me, clueless, and made a short walk to a nearby pair of police officers. We asked them "Excuse me, how do we get to the other side of the river?" and they almost laughed as they answered "By going across the bridge". lol
Shane then said "But, a fella over there just told me the bridge is closed". Just then, the pair looked at each other with concern and said "Not that we're aware of".
To say we sprinted in the opposite direction was an understatement.
Eventually I did get my birthday request: we ate McDonalds as we sat on stone benches along the river, looking out at the skaters on the ice rink, and Tower Bridge in the foreground.
Following that trip, we started talking more about travelling. One of my friends from college, from Canada, had been asking me to come over so we could go on a road trip. I was considering going in the next year, visiting places like Niagra Falls and Toronto.
The London passes we had bought were still valid for 3 months, expiring in the end of March. We decided to make a plan that we would make use of the London passes before we started to plan for Canada, close out the current trip first.
We did go back to London, and made use of the passes, with Shane's sister and her partner in March of 2019, just before the quarantines started. Funny how things work out for the best ☺
Takeaways from this trip:
Unless you have planned to visit the firework display well in advance, and you don't mind standing around the same place for hours, long before midnight, don't visit London at New Years. The London Eye wasn't running, the place was jammed with tourists and there was very little to do.
One bad experience doesn't mean you should give up: the next time we went to London, we took the Big Bus, scanning our QR codes from our phones. We have used Big Bus in whatever countries it was available, and incorporated a tour bus as our first activity in every new city we have visited since then.
...
Although we didn't actually go to the fireworks for midnight, we did something funny. So, the hotel we were staying in had a small bit of a view of Tower Bridge, so when the fireworks did go up at midnight, we could see them in the sky outside our window. However, we also had the TV set to watch the midnight fireworks in London, on BBC.
We sat there, eating birthday cake, watching Shrek 3 and rang in the New Year. I don't know what your idea of a good time is, but as long as you're with good company, safe and have access to good food/drink, what else could you want?
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