A weekend in London

It took me long enough to get to London, especially considering that I now live in Dublin and just a short 50 min flight would get me here!

A friend of mine, Magnus and I took off for a weekend to the metropolis that is London. Now you might argue that a weekend is not sufficient time to experience a city such as London, and you may be right. But on the other hand, if you skip all the large museums and large tourist traps, you’d be surprised with what you can cover on a weekend.

We left Dublin around 19.00 on Friday afternoon, landing at Stansted after a short Ryanair flight, found the train going into the city and after navigating the Underground, we eventually  reached Kennington where Magnus knew some people that would let us crash at their place.

Now first things first. The place where we met them all was of course the pub, a quintessential London experience. Unfortunately the pubs in London have a really bad habit of closing WAY to early. So we had to move on around 23.30 where we located a Spanish pub/restaurant and got, after a bit of asking nicely, some late night food. The evening later continued on to a “nightclub” which had an interesting Hawaii theme going.

Returning home at around 4 in the morning, we quickly got to bed, knowing that we would be up again at 8 that same morning. Most of you can understand how we felt when we got up that morning, and yes, we did manage to get up at 8 o’clock, despite having a decent handover. We looked out the window and saw the weather, which looked wet and cold. But, what can you do, after all we’re here to experience London and I guess that this weather just made it more of an authentic experience. 

We took the Underground to London Bridge, exploring landmarks such as the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Westminster, Waterloo, Big Ben and The London Eye. We continued onwards with a walk up to Trafalgar Square and later kept going to Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and Chinatown (which was smaller than what I was expecting).

The weather at this point had actually cleared up quite a bit and the sun was even looking through. So we figured that we could actually do some walking by now and not only stick to the Underground (even though it’s one of the best subways I’ve experienced so far).

Next stop on the list was Buckingham Palace, and what do you know. We didn’t plan it or anything, but we got there just in time to see the change of the guard.

From here we kept walking to Harrods and there we spent a while just looking around (there’s lots to see in there). By now we were pretty tired so we took the Underground and travelled to Edgware Road. We were on our way to a Pub we had read about called The Harcourt Arms, also known as ‘the Swedish Pub, where we had read that we would be able to watch the Swedish ice-hockey finals. 

I guess we spent 3 hours there, having a couple of pints and watching the game. We left for Nothing Hill to have something to eat. But it took us a little longer than expected. For some reason we kept taking the Underground in the wrong direction, must have been because of the pints we had. And it took us at least 3-4 times before we got it right, slightly annoying.

Nothing Hill seems like a nice neighbourhood, we had some food and just walked the beer off. On our way back to the apartment we got to experience some of the sights of London by night.

That night, we ended up in the same local Spanish bar and funny enough didn’t make it to bed until 2 in the morning. Next morning we were back up at 8 (rough weekend) at which time we left to explore Soho and surroundings where we had an English breakfast with everything included (sausages, ham, eggs, beans, toast and coffee), not a bad way to start the day.

Since the weather was nice, we wanted to get onboard the London Eye and at least make one real tourist thing. But it seems the rest of London’s tourists had gotten the same idea. When we came there there was first a huge line to buy the ticket and then an even bigger one to get onboard. We waited for like 5 min and then left. Instead of this we went over to Camden and it’s market. We didn’t buy anything but it sure was cool to look around. There were some seriously cool stuff there, next time I might have to bring a trunk of cash and do some shopping.

I loved my time in London and don’t know why I’ve never been here before. I have already started to plan my next trip over since only a weekend is not really enough. Sure I got a good orientation of the city, but next time I want to explore it a little more. Now that I know lots of different people here that have invited me back to stay at their place I really don’t have any reason not to come.

And I have also started to think that maybe this could be my next home…..I have been in Dublin for about a year now and if the job situation doesn’t improve within the next six months or so, maybe I’ll just move here (and just work as bartender at the Swedish pub), because why not?

We’ll see what happens.