London Town

J and I had telephone booth photo sessions, this is one of the only pics that turned out, and I'm not even IN the booth :-(

When we finally touched down in London last weekend after a cancelled flight, we were about 12 hours behind schedule. This was the first city where I was panicked that we wouldn't have time to see everything, and unfortunately we didn't make it through our entire to-do list. London has SO much to see and do that 48 hours just simply wasn't enough. Despite the time shortage, I still really enjoyed one of my all time favorite cities.

Apparently some really famous band from London changed Rock 'n Roll, and I guess Apple thought they deserved this giant billboard... 

Day one consisted of more walking than I thought I was physically able. And at first I was really disappointed because I didn't take my own advice and check my camera battery. After venturing to the Tower of London, about seven Tube stops from our hotel, the very first picture I took I was informed that my battery was about to die. Because of this, I had to be very selective on the photos after I thought to myself I was going to go camera crazy this weekend. What a shame. Anyway, I still managed to get a few good pictures.

The Sunflower Seed exhibit at Tate Modern 

After the Tower of London we walked far - very far! On the way to our next stop we randomly hit several markets, one of which was a chocolate fair. I thought I had died and gone to heaven! We eventually made our way to the Tate Modern, which I still think is one of the coolest museums I've been to (my mom and I visited there back when I studied abroad). It might not be one of the most "important" but it's just cool. Plus it's free, as are most of London's museums, which makes this ultra expensive city and little more forgiving. On display at the Tate was Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds. What is a Sunflower Seed exhibit you ask? Well, it's only 100,000 hand painted porcelain sunflower seeds laid out for people to gawk at. This ultra labor intensive exhibit employed 1,600 of Weiwei's local citizens.

J and E outside of Oxo, an awesome restaurant with a killer view 

After the Tate we headed over to see Big Ben, Westminster Abbey- where Prince William and Kate Middelton will marry, and the giant Ferris wheel known as the London Eye. With all of this sight seeing, we built up an appetite and met one of Justin's friends at an awesome restaurant, Oxo. Oxo has a breathtaking view of the city and I highly recommend going there at sunset.

Following a leisurely late afternoon snack was shopping on the famous Oxford Street where the Christmas lights made shopping that much more enjoyable. Saturday night was spent visiting with Justin's friend and his girlfriend and enjoying the fun London nightlife.

Oxford St. Christmas lights and Christmas crowd 

After our late night Saturday, we woke on Sunday and headed to the Spitalfields Market to browse some of the local designers work. Spitafields is in a cool area of London with lots of shops and restaurants. Justin demanded more culture after shopping, so we headed over to the British Museum. This incredible museum has the Rosetta Stone and ancient artifacts from the Parthenon. It also has amazing Oriental art and so so so much more. You could really spend days in the British Museum.

An ancient Oriental artifact. I loved all the colors!

After the British Museum we darted over to the National Gallery and Trafalgar Square, which is directly in front of the museum. Our final museum stop on the trip! Since we were getting a little museumed out, we only saw a select number of paintings, included the famous Van Gogh's Sunflowers. Apparently our trip had a sunflower theme! Like the British Museum, you could really spend a great deal of time here. Since it was late on a Sunday by the time we reached the museum, we stayed for a quick second before doing some final shopping on Regent Street.

Van Gogh's Sunflowers

We were so exhausted by our travels and sight seeing, that Sunday night we opted to stay in our hotel, the JW Marriott Grosvoner, again instead of traveling to the "burbs" for one last visit with Justin's friend. We really could not walk another step, our feet were finished. So we had a nice dinner at Rocket. Rocket is located near awesome shopping and tons of other great restaurants. It was a great way to end an excellent trip. 

J and E exhausted at Rocket 

The two things on my list that we missed were seeing Buckingham Palace and watching the changing of the guard as well as Harrod's, the most fabulous department store in the world. A trip back to London cannot be scheduled soon enough!