What with the Diamond Jubilee celebrations taking place in London this bank holiday weekend, I thought that I would share with you my experience of London. Now, up until the Easter bank holiday this year, I had never visited the capital of the United Kingdom, despite it being somewhere I had always wanted to visit. Whilst my review may not cover all topics (I was only in town for the weekend), I will now discuss my experience of London.

Hopefully my review will help people who have never been to London before. My view of London is through the eyes of someone who lives in the middle of nowhere and so as you can imagine London was like nothing I had ever seen before!

Obviously, being a city, I expected London to be very busy. Although when I actually got there, coming from a tiny village in the middle of the Welsh hills, I was amazed by how busy the city actually was (by the way I have been to other cities before, Cardiff, Liverpool, Birmingham etc). It was a huge contrast compared to my usual 'so quiet' surroundings. Everywhere I looked there was something going on (I.e. cars whizzing pasts, people rushing everywhere). I loved the whole 'fast paced' thing as it made such a lovely change from green scenery, although I have to admit on the third day I was a bit like 'argh, I'm fed up of having to keep dodging people in the street'. You have to constantly look where you're going or you will bump into someone.

I loved the whole atmosphere in London. I found it to be very magical and I loved how full of charm the city was. I would describe London as being modern and very patriotic. When in the city, I felt so proud to be British. There are so many shops selling 'London' merchandise which is nice.

There were so amazing sights to see. I had a lot of 'wow' moments, especially as I found the city to be so magical. I thought that it was great seeing the sights that I had only ever seen on television before; I.e. Big Ben, Tower of London and The London Eye. A lot of the sights which we saw were whilst we were on board the Big Bus Tours. I was looking forward to seeing Buckingham Palace although apparently buses aren't allowed up to the palace (only cars) which was a shame. Although we could have got off the bus at Buckingham Palace had we wanted, although because some members of our group had booked to go on the London Eye for a certain time in the afternoon, we didn't have time to get off at the Palace. Although next time I would definitely take a trip to the Palace.

Now I knew that London was famous for its red buses and black taxis, although I was surprised that everywhere you looked you could guarantee within around 2 or 3 seconds a red bus and a black taxi would whiz past. I was surprised that they were actually everywhere, and so no wonder London is associated with them.

Whilst on the subject of travel; I have to say London is so easy to get around as there is plenty of transport available. Such a huge comparison to where I live where the only means of transport is one 'bus service' which goes to town once a week, and comes back the same day! Once a week! So to have a bus available every couple of seconds is amazing! We actually went on the 'Big Bus Tours' (see my review) which were brilliant and took us pretty much everywhere we wanted to go.

We found the people to be very welcoming and very helpful. They were happy to help and give us directions which I thought was lovely.

Like the rest of Britain, the weather in London was very unpredictable. I had hoped that the weather would be lovely and hot like it had been the previous week, although it was actually very dull and we experienced light rain at times which was a shame. I'm sure the city would have looked much more beautiful had the weather been lovely.

One thing which was annoying, but to be expected in London was the fact that everything was expensive; all the tourist attractions we wanted to see were really expensive (London Eye, Madame Tussauds etc). Being a student on a budget, this was annoying.

Although, we did find some free things to do in London. Our hotel was located by Regent's Park and so we had a lovely afternoon walking through the park which was free. There are many parks in London, although this was the only one which we visited and would thoroughly recommend.

I was actually hoping that I would see some celebrities in London, although I was disappointed that I didn't see one!

London is definitely the kind of place which you can keep going back to. I think that as there is so much to do, each visit will be different as you will be seeing different things each time. Also, you will never get bored of London as there are so many things to do. I would definitely consider it a great place where you can spend a weekend every now and again.

I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to London and would definitely recommend it.


~ * Tips * ~

Keep your camera on you at all times! There is so much to see and you may bump into someone famous!

Taxis are quite cheap. We travelled around on the Big Bus Tours which cost us around £30 each for a whole day (as there were 6 of us, that worked out at £180 just for a bus). We enjoyed using the bus to get around, but considering that the 3 taxis we took cost just £8 for all of us per journey, we could have saved over a £100.

Carry your mobile phone at all times - it's so easy to get lost in the crowd and so its important that you can keep in touch.

I found London to be very clean - there was always lots of 'street cleaning' going on whilst we were there.

Be careful when crossing the road. We almost got knocked over when crossing the road!

Watch your bags at all times.

Enjoy London!

Thanks for reading!
June 2012
Xdonzx / xd-o-n-z-x