Londinium

Last Friday Amanda and I set off at 11:11am on the train into Kings Cross for a weekend in London.  Ironically, we have been in England for about a month and a half and still hadn't seen the lovely capital.  We immediately got our tickets for the tube all weekend and then headed to southwest London where our hostel was located (actually quite close to Heathrow).  When we finally arrived we found out that we were being transfered to the Belgravia Hotel that is closer to the city centre because the hostel's hot water was broken.  We hopped back on the train and it took another hour or so to ride all the way to the hotel.  We checked in and were pleasantly suprised with the upgrade.  We now had our own room and our own bathroom, plus we were closer to all of the touristy spots.  We even got to pay 1/4 of the cost for the two nights at the nice hotel because they had to charge us the same price as we were getting at the hostel.  Unfortunately it was a little late in the day by the time we accomplished all of that so we were limited on what we could go do.  We rode the tube out to the Tower of London and walked around outside.  We also photographed and even touched the Thames River (pronounced Tems) and walked across the London Bridge (luckily it didn't fall down!).  We then decided to get on the tube and ride out to Greenwich Village.  Here we had fun perusing a bookstore sale (all books one pound!) and we ran to Greenwich Park to see the Prime Meridian.  I sort of thought that they might close the gate when we ran in, but we were determined to get to the National Maritime Museum to experience standing in the East and West Hemispheres simultaneously.  We made it and it was cool to see the green laser pointing out from the museum.  Now as we came back down the hill and through the park we noticed how dark it was getting and we got kind off nervous because the park was not lit at all on the inside (luckily there was some light pollution from London!).  As we approached the gate to exit we saw people having to climb the fence.  We were locked in to the Greenwich Park!  Luckily though, by the time we approached the gate a security guard drove up and let us out of the gate.  We happily headed back to the tube and went back to our hotel.  We stopped at the Chicken Palace for cheap pizza and spent the rest of the evening watching the BBC.