Discovering London by foot

The first day in London - Getting to know the City

The first day in London I woke up quite early. The main reason for that wasn't the owner taking a shower and getting ready for work, it was me being hungry. Extremely hungry. I hadn't managed to eat something since my Burger King visit at CDG airport in Paris, just some sweets. So I got ready and left the house.

I didn't really know where to go, so I asked Google Maps for the next railway station and it navigated me through an interesting village with a lot of people around me and a market at the street - it was Saturday. I found a TESCO express supermarket and bought something for breakfast (it didn't look so good, but I would have eaten everything at that moment). Eating, I walked around the market, watched the things and people there and finally, without any problem, I found the railway station.

I entered and found out that the train would arrive in 15 minutes, so I still had some time to have breakfast (that turned out to be quite disgusting). The platform was outside and fortunately, the weather was really good for London in May. It didn't even rain! In the train, I sat down and looked out of the window for the next 20 minutes. It was interesting to see the transformation "little village - large city" and we stopped several times at a red signal. Finally, I arrived at London Bridge and left the train. I was happy that I had managed to get to London without any problem or wrong train, and was ready to start my discovery tour.

It was still early in the morning, about 9:30 am, and I decided just to walk around where my feet would lead me to. I took the way next to the river Thames, fascinated by the view of Tower Bridge and to all the modern skyscrapers in The City. In the afternoon I would go there and meet a friend of mine who was doing his internship in London and wanted to meet me while I was there. But he was still sleeping, so I found a Starbucks to have a (better) breakfast and sat down next to the river. I don't want to say that I love to be alone, but sometimes I enjoy being free, not having to discuss with anybody and being able to make my decisions as I like. I could go wherever I wanted, when and how long I wanted and that was what I really liked about travelling alone.

Getting to know Shaun the Sheep

But of course, just for some days. Brussels was okay, because it was only a weekend and London were only five days. But for longer I couldn't stay alone because I really have a problem with getting to know new people. But for London it was great, I was really excited and so after my coffee, I just stood up and continued walking. I took a lot of pictures and next to London's city hall I found a statue of Shaun the Sheep. I was a bit confused, but when I came nearer I could read that it was for fundraising for children's hospitals. It looked really cute, so I took some pictures of it as well.

Tower Bridge

I continued to Tower Bridge and found some more of those Shaun statues. They were all themed differently, according to the place they were placed. I was happy that there was something special and took a lot of pictures and selfies - I already had a million boring tourist London pictures. I crossed Tower Bridge and walked along the riverside, next to the Tower of London. I didn't want to enter because it was already almost lunchtime and I was really hungry. So I stopped at Domino's Pizza, had a short lunch and thought about what to do next. That was the moment when my friend sent me a message if I would like to meet now. So I told him that it would take me about 30-40 minutes to The City and started my way. It was nearer than I had thought, so I arrived at the building much too early and had to wait. But it was okay, as I was always too early I was used to waiting. Finally, he arrived and we decided to walk around a bit, talking about how we are, what we are doing, his life in London, my life in France etc.

Meeting a German Study Colleague

It was very nice to have somebody German to talk to after all the time I had passed in France, even if I had two German friends in Amiens, too. But he studied the same thing as me and we had been friends before the semester abroad, too. So we walked through The City, he showed me some interesting places there, told me where he worked, and it was just impressing. It was like a mixture of modern and traditional in such a small area. We left The City and continued our way until we arrived at St Paul's Church. I was shocked when he told me that he had never done sightseeing during all his time in London, he just went out to have some drinks, but never to all those interesting places that were everywhere in London. So we sat down at St Paul's Church, watched the people and enjoyed the sunny day.

After a while we continued our way, crossed the Millenium Bridge and stopped shortly next to Shakespeare's Globe theatre and the Tate's Art Museum. But as we both weren't that interested in Art and I had already visited the Globe theatre once, we continued into the other direction, where the Parliament etc. was situated. We walked and walked and walked, it was really nice. After a while, we arrived next to Westminster Abbey and the Parliament and all the other interesting places in London - Trafalgar Square, St James Park, Buckingham Palace etc.

We hadn't even realized how much we had walked until our feet started to hurt. So we looked for the next metro station that was actually quite far away. After 25 minutes we arrived there and took the metro back to the city centre. There, he told me that he needed a break now and that we maybe could meet the next day or the day after that when my other friend from Oxford would come to visit me and him. I understood that he was not the person for long sightseeing trips, so I let him go home and went to a supermarket nearby to buy some food - I didn't want to starve again as the evening before.

It was a bit complicated to get to London Bridge again without walking a lot, so I had to change the Metro twice before I could get into my train to the village outside of London (well, it was still London but I don't remember the name anymore, so I just call it village here). I came home at about 8 pm and was so tired, so I decided to take the shower the next day in the morning and went to my room. I watched some series on my Tablet, ate some sweets and fell asleep quickly.

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