Horne's Swedish Exchange: London

Hey everyone,

Last Saturday I returned from a trip to London where I stayed from the 25th to 28th visiting Shehz, Kariim and Ryan Hindle, buddies from my engineering program at UW who had recently graduated and were kicking off their backpacking trip of Western Europe. We stayed in a hostel called Picadilly Backpackers, located right in the heart of downtown London just outside Picadilly Circus (and also, as we discovered, a couple minutes outside of Soho, the gay area of London).

To quickly summarize our trip, we did the traditional tourist thing visiting London's main tourist attractions: Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, St Paul's Cathedral, London Tower and the Tower Bridge. We also went to the British Museum which contains the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts outside of Egypt as well as half of the sculptures from the Parthenon in Greece. Other notable destinations were Trafalgar Square where a large number of Liverpool FC fans had gathered to cheer on their team including one older man who ended up swimming naked in the fountain at the centre of the square and Harrod's, a ridiculously-priced luxury department store in Knightsbridge.

The few impressions I had of London are outlined below:

1) Obesity and crooked teeth are much more prevalent in England than Scandinavia
2) Prices in London are VERY high - for items such as food in restaurants or drinks in clubs, don't be surprised if it costs the same as in Canada but in pounds -- so 2.2 times as expensive as home. That being said, we did manage to find an excellent Italian food restaurant called Pollo close to our hostel that prepared authentic Italian food for a relatively cheap price.
3) Travelling on the Tube is quick and easy but can be expensive. The best thing to do is buy an Oyster card right when you get into London. There is a 3 pound service charge when purchasing the card but after that you may top it up with as much money as you like and use it in place of tickets, thus saving you from having to queue to get tickets. The Oyster card also gives you a discounted rate for fares -- purchasing tickets on a trip-by-trip basis on the other hand can cost you between 4.60-6.10 pounds for a single trip -- ouch.
4) Crowdedness - the streets of London are packed with people, especially areas like Picadilly Circus and Oxford Circus.
5) Happy Hour - most restaurants and bars, at least ones in the Picadilly and Soho areas, offer discounted prices on beer and appetizers between the hours of 5-7pm on weekday nights. Accordiningly, these places fill up quickly with young businesspeople looking to wind down after their day in the office.