Touring the monopoly board

My first day in London was jam packed. It started at 7am with an English breakfast at my "luxury" hotel. My aim for the day was to see the changing of the guards at 11am and as many other tourist sights I could via the hop on, hop off bus. The bus I got was called "The original tour" and it was awesome.  Seated atop a double decker bus with a live local commentator, I could see amazing architecture of buildings dating back to the 1600s and learnt heaps of quirky fun facts about places in London. Some of my favourite facts include; there are 80 shoe stores on Oxford street, the Queens garden at Buckingham Palace is the size of 40 soccer fields and the Tower of London which is now a museum has previously been a prison, torture chamber and mint.

One thing that I particularly liked, was how the bus took us through almost every street on the Monopoly Board and our tour guide pointed out Mayfair and Parklane which are two of the wealthiest streets in real life. I knew that all the places on the Monopoly board existed, but I didn't realise how close they all were and it was very interesting to see them in real life, I will definitely have a different perspective on the game next time I play it.

On bus, outside Harrods

From the hop on hop off bus, I got off 4 times during the day;
1. Buckingham Palace - changing of the guard

Changing of the guard

Buckingham Palace

2. Big Ben and West Minister Abbey

Big Ben

West Minister Abbey

3. Trafalgar Square and National Gallery

There was set up and rehearsals underway at Trafalgar Square for West End Live, which is an annual 2 day free festival where all of the musicals that are performing at West End take the stage and perform 3 songs to promote their show. I saw a rehearsal of a Kinky Boots number yesterday and I am keen to go back today to see the real thing.

Trafalgar Square

National Gallery

4.  Kensington Palace

The palace was amazing, my favourite areas were the gardens, the Kings staterooms and the exhibition on Princess Diana's fashion.

Front view of Kensington Palace

My favourite dress from Princess Diana's collection

Staircase to Queens area at Kensington Palac

By the time I finished at Kensington Palace, it was 6pm, time to grab my bags from my hotel and find the hostel for my 3 nights. The hostel is really good, I'm in a 6 bed female dorm and we have a toilet and shower in our room. The room is quite spacious and there is a trendy bar downstairs. After taking a much needed shower, I wandered down to the bar where I met a group of Australians who are going on a Top Deck tour that leaves today. The group was comprised of 2 sisters, one with her boyfriend and another girl they had just met, all of them were from Melbourne. After having a drink at the bar we wandered down the street to a pub to get some pizza for dinner. Then we walked back to the hostel at 10pm and it was still light outside! The daylight hours here are so long which is good but also confusing. It starts getting light at 4:30am and dark after 10pm.

Unfortunately I am discovering that this blog site is not very compatible on iPhones (which explains the poor formatting, the poor writing is explained by my jet lag). To overcome the technical issues, I may have to write shorter posts about specific activities rather than full days...