After a four hour train ride, we arrived in London's King's Cross Station. We collected our baggage from the last train in the cart, and dashed out into the rain to find a taxi. Our first stop in London was our hotel, to drop off our luggage.
It was around six in the evening, but given that we'd spent most of the day sitting in a train, we decided to stretch our legs and explore the city. First we located the nearest Starbucks and then with Chai Latte in hand we headed up to the Tower Bridge area.
The last time we were in London (6 years ago) we rode the London Eye. I wanted to ride it again, but at night so we could see the lights of London. We bought tickets for the 8:30 ride on the eye, and bought tickets to ride the water cruise in the mean time. It's always nice to see the city from the water perspective, especially given how important the river Thames was to the development of London. Once the river cruise was done, we grabbed a quick dinner and then headed to the eye. Seeing Lindon at night reminded me about the vastness of the city, it seemed that the lights stretched forever in all directions. Once our ride was over, we jumped in a taxi and headed back to the hotel for the evening.
Day 17- Sunday
Last night on our way up to our room, we noticed the hotel offering a bus tour to Stonehenge. Given that neither of us has seen Stonehenge, and Sunday was supposed to be a relatively sunny day, we booked two tickets.
The tour bus to Stonehenge pickup us up promptly at 11:45am Sunday morning and two hours later dropped us off in the parking lot at Stonehenge. We had an hour and a half to explore the stones, and return to the bus to head back to the city. The rocks at Stonehenge were amazing, but the visitor's centre and other facilities were undersized and poorly designed for a World Heritage site. We've seen a lot of attractions in the last three weeks and comparatively, the facilities at Stonehenge were inadequate to say the least. The lines for the restrooms were quite long, waiting to use three stalls, three sinks, one operational soap dispenser and a weak hand dryer. Not good for a site that pumped through 15-20 tour buses, and over a hundred cars in the hour and a half we were there! The good news is, that there are plans in the works for a new visitor's centre just a mile up the road, with land trains bringing the tourists into see the rocks themselves. A vast improvement over the run down facilities, and farm field parking they have now! Maybe we'll come back in a few years to see the changes?!
The bus dropped us off at Victoria Station in London, and we bought subway passes in preparation of the local sight seeing we will be doing tomorrow, before flying out if London on Tuesday morning.
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