Ever since the travelling bug has bitten me, there have been a few destinations on my travel list that I really wanted to visit, but never got the chance to. Of course, I haven’t seen many of those yet to this day, but yesterday, I was able to put a checkmark next to one of the cities I wanted to go see for a very long time. As you can probably guess from the title, that city is London. It is true that I’ve “only” spent around 11 hours (give or take) in the city, which means I definitely need to come back again in the future and spend a few days, if not the whole week, and explore it even more in detail.
Like I said, my friend, who actually planned the whole day, for which I am super thankful for, and I “only” spent about 11 hours walking around the city of London, but oh boy, how amazing those 11 hours have been! The friend, who I’m actually staying with these days as well, drove us down to the city, parking close to a London Overground train line, that took us right into the heart of the city itself. The train ride took roughly 15 minutes, if I remember it correctly, and when we stepped off that train, it all felt so surreal that it didn’t really fully sink in for quite some time that I was actually in London!
There have been many moments like that throughout the day, some I actually expressed out loud while we were there, but for the most part, I kept those feelings to myself, and I’m putting them out there only now, when I’m reflecting on everything that happened.
First off, as we were already close to the station, I wanted to go check out the Platform 9 3/4 and the Harry Potter store at the King’s Cross station. Of course the line to take the photo with the “platform entrance” was too long for me to wait and get that photo taken, so we just ventured into the store itself, to take a look and naturally, I bought something in there. What kind of a Harry Potter fan would I be if I didn’t?!
Our next stop took us right to one of the most important parts of the city, the Buckingham Palace. At first we were a few hundred meters away from it, since we decided to check out The Hyde Park first, but after that it was time to see the Palace and everything surrounding it. Interestingly enough, the Royal Family was actually inside at that time, of course we didn’t see them, but that meant that the security all around that area was on a much higher state of alert.
If I would’ve tried to remember our exact route of the day, I would definitely have missed something, or said we’ve seen something before something else. There’s been so many new things for me to see, and apart from taking many, many photos, I tried to take it all in as best as I could and just enjoy the day that we’ve been having. The weather was absolutely amazing as well, maybe a bit too windy for my taste, but anyway.
We knew we wanted to leave one special place to visit towards the end of our day, and that was Primrose Hill Park. I didn’t know exactly what you could see there, I mean my friend told me about seeing the London skyline from there, but that was it. So I wasn’t expecting all that much from it. After it got dark already, we managed to make our way towards the park, and let me tell you, I was not ready for what I had seen there! The view of the city, its centre, areas around it, in the dark with all the lights on, it was just incredible! You can see a glimpse of it on the photo below, but I don’t think these photo make enough of an impression on what it looked and felt like to me, standing on top of that hill.
After seeing all of this, it was time to head back to the car and home. The journey to get us to the car was one of the funniest moments of the day as well, as we were literally running to catch all of the trains we had to take to eventually get us to the car. I haven’t even mentioned the transportation that we used throughout the day, but that will be coming in a special post after I get home, and properly put my thoughts together, cause this trip is far from over!
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