Day nine: London
For our full day in London, there was one place we had to get to, but I still think it was a bad idea to pick this one to do first. We went to the Waterstones bookstore on Piccadilly. One of Europe’s biggest bookstores with five floors of books in all genres. The reason why this was a bad idea to do first is because we walked more than 20.000 steps with three books each in our bag packs.
After buying books we went to Kings Cross to look for the Harry Potter shop and Platform 9 3/4. It was so incredibly busy here that we only took a picture from afar. We didn’t have the time to stand in line for over one hour. There was still a lot to see in only one day.
During the sunnies hours of the day, we went to the zoo and here we got most of our steps in. The London Zoo is massive. They have a lot of animals here, but the sloth must have been the cutest one. He was chilling upside down in the sun. Almost all the animals were in there indoor enclosures because it was quite chilly outside, but most of them were accessible to the public so we were still able to see them.
On our way to dinner, we were able to see the Tower of London in the daylight. It is so strange to see a castle in the middle of the city. London is definitely the place to go to see old buildings. I was quite surprised to see so many old buildings in the inner city. In a lot of other big cities we have visited it all has been demolished and replaced by modern buildings.
The last thing we did today was to hear and see the Big Ben. We couldn’t leave the city in the morning without seeing with our own eyes. The Elizabeth Tower has been standing here since 1859, but it still looks beautiful. These massive clocks are still hand-wound and this needs to happen three times a week. This massive task takes about 1,5 hours each time. Take that for a workout.
By the Big Ben, we also went to look at the horses of the Horse Guards but they were just packing up when we arrived there. We had to do it with the side of a few troopers cleaning up and we could still smell the horses who just went into their stables. Next time we are here we go to them first.
