After spending a month in Canada, it was about time I started travelling to foreign lands again and that entailed heading to the United Kingdom and Ireland for 5 weeks, before returning to the homeland for one last wedding!

I arrived in London and took the train followed by a Tube to my Hostel.  I checked in and then went for a wander around the neighborhood.

Saw some telephone booths.

cool buildings and noticed that everything was very old.  This pub established in 1637 and this pub established in 1649.  It was crazy how long some of these things have been operating for.

On such wanderings, I ended up in the west end neighborhood where all of the musicals are playing.  I walked past Bat out of Hell and was like, hmmmm I wonder how much that costs.  It was starting in 30 minutes and so i popped in and asked the box office what the deal was.  The cheapest tickets were something like 40 pounds, so I asked about rush tickets on another day and the lady told me that they were available for today’s show for 25 pounds.  I was confused since I asked what the cheapest tickets were and yet the rush tickets were not mentioned.  I ended up in amazing seats and settled in for an amazing show.  I very much enjoyed it and would recommend it for any rock and roll fan, meatloat or not.

The rest of my evening included an adventure to find a bank machine since my other card that didn’t have fees was compromised and I needed to find a citibank to avoid fees.  Luckily my card was waiting for me in Cambridge, so I only had to get through London.

I ended up on a wild goose chase and ended up just getting cash at a normal ATM.  Luckily the ATMs in the UK do not charge a fee, so the only fee would be from citibank which isn’t too bad.

The next morning, I woke up and went for a run along the river.  I saw the tower bridge and the millennium bridge and ALOT of run commuters.  I have never been in a place with so many run commuters.  It was crazy, but also awesome!

I also saw an Umbrella shop!

After my run, it was time to do some more wandering.  I went to the national Portrait gallery which I probably would not have paid for, but the best part about the UK is that most of the museums are FREE!

I wandered around enjoying the art.  I remmember doing a project on Rembrandt at some point in elementary school and I remember this painting from it.  So I had to take a selfie.

When I exited the portrait gallery, there were tons of people in Trafalgar square, all standing around waiting for something.  Turns out that today was the 100th anniversary of the RAF and they were doing a 100 plane flyover to celebrate.  I happened to walk out of the gallery about 5 minutes before the flyover!

That had a really cool mix of old school planes and new ones as well as helicopters and one of the 2 Lancaster bombers still left in operation (the other one is in Hamilton Ontario Canada).  Towards the end they started doing some really cool formation flying.

One was even in the shape of 100.

It was also really cool that Canada house is right there, so I was able to get a few shots with the Canadian flag in it!  I obviously had to get a photo in front of Canada house as well.

The planes were flying over Buckingham palace and the whole royal family was apparently watching from their Balcony.  It was already my plan to head in that direction anyways, so I wandered over to the palace to see what could be seen.

The whole street was lined with RAF flags and there were tons of people still mosying about.

It was also pretty cool that they had closed the road to traffic, so I was able to get a better photo in front of the palace.

I saw parts of Big Ben…

and Piccadilly Circus….

and Westminster Abby…

And the London Eye!

Eventually I made it to the war museum which provided a lot of background on the Britain take on the war in museum form.

After the war museum I was pretty beat, so I got some food, had a beer and then called it for the night.

The next morning, I went on an adventure run through the park.

After returning from my run, I headed over to the British Museum, to check out one of the oldest museums in the world, full of a wealth of treasures the Brits have gathered over the years.  The whole experience was a little strange for me, because on one hand it was really cool to see all of these preserved artifacts from around the world, that have been preserved because they are in the museum.  But if you read how the museum received some of those things, it comes down to a general taking it from X country because they wanted it and they had an army.

One of my favorite artifacts though, was the Rosetta stone.  It’s crazy that this one discovery, allowed us to translate one of the craziest languages and without it we probably would be pretty lost.

The other thing that I thought was really cool, was Cleopatra’s mummy.

I spent a pretty decent ammount of time in the museum, but it was gigantic and I got a bit museum out by the end of it.  I also remember getting pretty tired at some point as well.

After the museum, I began my wanders again.  I had been told about this pizza place around the corner and so I opted to get some pizza for lunch.

Up next, I made my way over to the Tate modern museum, which is a modern art museum in an old power plant building which has a free tower, with a cool view of the city.  I really don’t understand modern art, but I didn’t have to pay, so I thought I would wander around for a bit.

I eventually made it up to the tower and the view was pretty great.  I saw the shard and views of the river!

After the museum, I headed downtown to meet up with Heather who I went to Waterloo with.  She’s living in London these days, so we met up for a beer!

It was also the day of the world cup semi finals against Croatia, so we decided that we really needed to get to a bar early in order to ensure we got a spot.  So we wandered a bit but quickly made our way to a bar to secure a spot.

Heather actually ended up having tickets to another place, so she went to meet some friends and I made some of my own at the bar.

Unfortunately England didn’t win, but it was still a really good time and the atmosphere was still really cool.

There were a lot of people out watching the game because the tube was packed after the game finished.  I didn’t look at the subway stop, I was supposed to get off at and lost cell reception, so it ended up taking me much longer to get home than anticipated.

The next day, I decided to explore the beer scene of London and so after some morning wanderings, I headed to the East part of town where there were several breweries.  During my wanderings there was a cool public square with a big TV displaying Wimbledon. I looked up how much it would cost to go to a tennis match and it ended up being a bit to expensive.  I also walked by the Globe theater and checked out the Borough Market which was cool.

Unfortunately alot of the breweries were only open on the weekend so there were a few that were closed.

First stop was Bianca Road Brewing.  It was a tiny place and I was the only one in there, but i had a nice chat with the bartender.  It was super chill.

Up next was Fourpur brewing which was a bigger facility and they had a pretty extensive tap list.

I met a guy from the US who was in town on business and he had basically the same idea as me, with the same list of breweries on his itinerary.

We walked to the next spot together which was my first of many breweries located under train tracks.  There are a lot of elevated train tracks in the UK that have these arched warehouse type spaces underneath which is perfect for a brewery.

Up next was Southwark brewing.

Our last stop was not a brewery but it was a craft bar called the draft house where we also grabbed some food!

I ended up getting a one day city bike pass which took me over the tower bridge on the way back to the hostel.  So I decided to get a night time photo.  This is where my gorilla pod fell off the railing and cracked one of the legs.  RIP Gorilla pod.

And just like that, my last full day in London came to a close.  I was headed to Cambridge in the afternoon the next day.

I woke up in the morning and went for an early run, as I had to check out of the hostel.  My run look my by King’s cross station, which is home to the famous Platform 9 3/4 from Harry Potter.  You could wait in line to get a photo pushing the trolly, but I opted to just get one on my way by.

After checking out of the hostel I decided to go to the Tower of London, despite the high cost of entrance.  The crown jewels are there and of course the famous Beefeaters.

I obviously had to get a picture with one.

They also had the traditional guards who you see as one of the icons of England.

The tower itself had some cool artifacts and had a pretty good description explaining the history of the tower and how it has evolved over time.  You could also wait in line to see the crown jewels, which I did (only took 30 minutes) there were not photos allowed, but they were pretty neato burrito.

I spent around 3 hours in there and really enjoyed it.

One of the craziest things is that they have 6 Ravens living on the property and the legend goes that if the Ravens were to leave or are lost, then the crown will fall and Britain with it.

After about 3 hours at the tower, I headed to the train station and jumped on a train to Cambridge!