On the third day in London, I headed to the Wellington Arch, the meeting point for the Free Walking Tour of London. David had also said he would be there, as did a brother and sister pair from Munich whom we’d met on the previous day’s tour.

Since I arrived at Wellington Arch early, I walked around the area, looked at a memorial for fallen soldiers and waited for the group and the guide to show up. It was a nice little green park area. As I was making my way back around to the arch, a woman about my age came up to me and asked if I was there for the Free Tour. I said that I was, and was waiting for the group. We started chatting. Her name was Alissa, she lives in New York and she is a graphic/web designer! Just like me!! Now that is awesome.

This time the number of people who showed up for the tour was larger, so they split the group up into 3. David, Alissa, myself and the brother and sister from Munich all managed to get into the same group. Sights we saw on this tour? Buckingham Palace (unfortunately the changing of the guard had been canceled because of the London Fair), the houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, St. James’ Park, Waterloo, Wellington Arch and many more I’m forgetting! The whole time, I just couldn’t believe I was actually there! I also thought of my mother who reads a lot of books that take place in England and wished she was there to see these things with me! One day we will both go together.
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Woke up bright and early and headed to the designated meet-up point for the Old City Walking Tour. It was a wonderful tour and our guide, Anna, was animated and made history fun. The tour started at the Tower of London and from there we made our way to the Tower Bridge (often mistaken for the London Bridge), the London Bridge, the financial district of London (and the Bank of England), plenty of small streets, Millennium Bridge, St. Paul’s Cathedral and the famous Church of the Knights Templar. At one point we tried to break the world record of how many people can you cram into one of those red phone booths. The record was I believe 14, we nearly broke it when 13 of us managed to fit inside! :-) Everytime I see one of those booths I wonder if it leads to the Ministry of Magic.

The tour was about 2 and a half hours. During the tour I met David, a literary agent from Thailand who was in London for a book fair. He finally had some time off to do some exploring. We had fun stopping to take photos during the tour and then running to catch up with the group.

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The London trip (April 23-26) marked my very first experience with solo travel (not counting Copenhagen). I spent a great deal of time figuring out the logistics of my short weekend stay in London, everything from the flights there to accommodation to sightseeing plans.

I decided to fly with easyJet (the Southwest Airlines of Europe). For accommodation, Preben had informed me earlier about Couch Surfers and Hospitality Club, awesome concepts where people offer their couches or bedrooms to travellers for 1, 2, 3 or more nights in exchange for friendship and stories. I joined both sites but was unable to find accommodation quickly enough due to lack of time (and because I only sent out 3 hosting requests; I didn’t want to spam everyone, lol). However I remain a member of both sites because I definitely plan to do more traveling in the future.

I ended up settling with the Astor Hyde Park hostel, my very first experience with one! I was a bit wary of the fact that my room was mixed female and male, but according to the reviews online no one had any problems with it so I decided to give it a shot!

The easyJet flight on an A319 to London was fast and smooth. I was a bit nervous, thinking, “what am I doing, coming to London all by myself?!” I was also very excited — London was one of the cities I’d read so much about and now I was going there!

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