Thursday June 4, 2009

After putting the hostel experience behind us, we went to Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station so I could go to Hogwarts.  Unfortunately it is a ruse, and I did not go to Hogwarts.  We got a hotel guide and looked for a place that was cheap where we could stay so we would not have to go back to the hostel.  We found a hotel called Stylotel which was decorated with a futuristic feel, but sorta like the 1980's gone wrong with silver walls and blue carpet.  It was clean and 75 pounds a night so we got one room to share.  There were only two twin beds in the room and they were right next to each other and wouldn't move so it was a little weird, but way better than the hostel- so we dealt with it (because of clean showers!).  Another thing about the hotel is that we were only supposed to have 2 people in the room, but they never asked how many people we had so they kind of just overlooked that rule for us.  We had pizza for lunch at a small Italian place and a Lion bar for dessert (they have the best chocolate bars here).  What was surprising is that I thought we would spend a fortune on food this trip, but we were able to eat at sit down restaurants for about 3 quid a person by sharing meals and drinking water.  The day was sunny and warm so it was the perfect day to walk across Tower Bridge.  We were on the bridge when it opened which was a cool thing to see except the boat that came through was really small.  I think walking across the bridge was one of my favorite experiences.  Before the bridge we saw the Tower of London but we never went inside, going inside was one of the things we meant to do- its huge and has "hours of exploration."  It was about dinner time now, we spent a lot of the day walking around the area around Tower Bridge so we took the Underground to Goodge Street and ate Italian again, but we had lasagna.  Andrew and I wanted sushi like every meal and once we would leave the restaurant that we chose, we would see a sushi place, oh well.  After dinner we played Spades in the room for a while, which is the card game that Andrew and Kelsey taught us.  Later we walked around Hyde Park which was close to our hotel.