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We first arrived in LAX at 9:30am. Rob flew in from San Jose, I picked up Peter, and Ben came from Moorpark.

Looking outside, the horizon was beautiful.

When booking the tickets I asked for kosher meals, so they served me a specially catered one. They were pretty good throughout the trip.

Ben and Rob sat together while Peter and I sat together. Behind Ben and Rob was a hot girl they were talking about after the flight landed.

As usual I got no sleep on the flight.

We went through customs which went rather quick, where I met an extremely cute guy named Kyle. He was from USC and was doing a one month internship program in London for marketing.

We then put on our heavy backpacks where we took the Heathro Express to Paddington Station. We booked the Heathro Express tickets online in the states.

The train where Heathro express was looked pretty cool with the blue lighted background.

Heathro Express train

On the train, I started a conversation with the guy next to me, and he ended up being the Chief Risk Officer of some hedge fund. I asked him for some tips around about Europe, and he told me that in Prague, some of the taxi drivers carry guns and can electrocute you in the back of the seat if you don’t give them cash! The following week, we was going to fly out to San Francisco to meet up some girl he met previously at an airport bar so I gave him some tips about the city of where to eat and such.

To trek around town, we dropped off our luggage at a place called “left luggage”. They charge you 6 pounds a day to store your luggage. We took the tube to Kings Cross station.

Picture of the station.

A funny thing we noticed that in a lot of the advertisements were soliciting Mexico.

The tube (metro) is like any other subway, but sort of stuffy due to no air conditioning.

Our first stop of the day was Tower of London which is where a lot of people got executed and stuff.

The day itself was fairly nice. It was slightly overcast, and not humid.

Before walking inside, we had to pick up tickets which we also booked in the states.

We came right in time for the tour guide so we participated for a little while. But I eventually got bored of the tour and ventured off for a little bit while Peter stayed.

From tour of London you can see London Bridge. It looks sort of like a Disneyland bridge with the weird color combinations.

For whatever reason they had guards.

We are on the second level of a tower while Ben and Rob are on the bottom.

Big cannon. I think it might have been turkish or chinese.

Ben was immediately fascinated that it was called ‘Litter’ and not ‘Garbage’

This was some memorial to all the people who lost their life at the Tower of London.

Torture chamber.

More fascinations with cannons.

I forgot that the chain link fence had.. SPIKES

The Gherkin building by Sir Norman Foster. Looks like an egg.

Egg picture again

As you can tell about this point, you aren’t really going to get any educational tour about the Tower of London. I’m sure wikipedia has a better entry if you want to learn about it hehe.

Since the UK drives on the left side, the way you look before crossing changes also. All over the city there are explicit signs about this because I’m sure some tourists unknowingly walk looking the wrong direction.

I wonder if there is copyright infringement of Snow White here.

Traveling to any major city reminds you of the products that really come from the US. Like the iPod for example.

Next stop, brick lane. Here, they are known for their awesome Indian food.

We randomly stopped some person on the road asking for a suggestion, and he said this place is the best (the guy of course ended up being Asian). It was a halal restaurant, so I would have no troubles eating there.

The food there was pretty good. But it wasn’t like mindblowing good. It makes you realize that California cuisine pretty much gives you high expectations.

After we ate, we all were literally going to fall asleep. Some of us had been up for about 30 hours straight. We later took a powernap on the tub.

Next stop Big Ben.

The architecture in London makes the city looks very historic. Quite in contrast to West Coast cities in the US.

Not Westminster CA haha.

Around Big Ben was a big ferris wheel. At this time it started to rain so we got our umbrellas out. Unfortunately Peter and Ben forgot theirs at home.

Oliver Cromwell.. some dude important in British history.

Next stop was Westminster Abbey. I have to say that this place was AMAZING. Unfortunately they don”t allow pictures inside< but it is basically a church where a lot of people were buried there. Lots of famous kings, queens, and writers. I thought this was more interesting than Tower of London.

Well technically we could take one picture in Westminster Abbey. The courtyard is behind us.

Another pic of Westminster Abbey.

Of course.. we still had to get used to looking the correct direction.

Next stop.. buckingham. Unfortunately I couldn’t take the sign home.

The palace was quite majestic with oodles of tourists.

Guards with foofy hats.

VIDEO>Not changing of the guards hehe.

After being lost for a little bit, we asked someone how to get to Piccadilly Circus, and he told us to cross through St James Park. It was absolutely scenic.

Contemplating the meaning of life in a Zoolander fashion.

The park actually reminded me of one that I walked through in Tokyo last year (yoyogi park).

We got out of the park and proceeded to walk through Piccadilly Circus which is sort of like a mini times square.

Well not quite. It was a lot smaller than I thought. Times square has tons of screens compared to this.

We then proceeded to walk around where we found a fish and chips place to eat at. The food was okay, but the waitress was extremely rude. Not a good culinary experience in London.

Afterwards, we went to St Pancras station where we were to catch a train to Paris. However, I goofed and booked the train tickets for the day before, so I had to book 4 new tickets to Paris. I pretty much ate the cost (about a grand) to book new tickets since they wouldn’t credit my account. Technically I could have brought up the discussion to force everyone else to book a ticket also, but I didn’t feel like getting into an argument so early on the trip so I decided to take the hit so to speak.

While we were in the train station we met this really really friendly Australian guy Emmanuel where we ended up helping him learn about Paris a little bit. He was really thankful on this and bought us drinks later on the train. Rob and I ended up being the only ones up where we discussed Australian-US relations, politics, and travel. A pretty awesome experience.

Later that night, we arrived in Paris, where we couldn’t buy metro tickets because they didn’t accept Non-French Credit Cards. Instead I told the guys to jump the metro gate. So can you imagine this.. some of the guys first experience in Paris is to jump the metro gate and start running out afterwards haha.

We then arrived in Gare du Nord where we walked over to Melody’s place. She was only about a 15 minute walk away where we caught up, everyone took showers, and headed to bed.

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