London Day 2

Today we went got up and by the recommendation of the hotel concierge, had breakfast at a tiny nearby order at the counter restaurant. After that we hopped on the underground and took it to Leicester Square (pronounced "lester".... our congierge made fun of americans who pronounce it like "lie caster"), where we wandered around the many theatres, restaurants, and tourist memorabilia shops after buying same day tickets to Les Miserables (which are discounted).





Right next to Leicester is Piccadilly Circus (which isn't really a circus... its what they call big outdoor modern shopping areas). It's kind of like the "Time Square" of London. We did a brief wander around there, but Erika hates shopping so we made our way quickly onto our next stop.





We then made our way to Hyde Park, which was about a 15 minute walk from Piccadilly. Hyde Park is GINORMOUS and so beautiful, and they had a christmas carnival going on with lots of food and rides and some street vendors. Once there, Erika's feet were killing her, so Chloe and I took a longer walk to check out more of the park's vast span. Little did our poor cripple know that her shoe choice of heavy wooden clog type slip ons had not only caused her tired feet, but she now had a blister that had bled completely through her socks. Grand.





tired feet :) not Erika's injured one though... that one was too gross for a photo


We decided there was no way Erika could go on with those ridiculously uncomfortable shoes since they hurt after less than a day, so we took a 2nd trip to Harrod's to find her some real walking gym type shoes. The girl who helped us was really nice, and we chatted with her about how she was going to move to New York to be near her boyfriend and hopefully find a job and start a life in America. Feeling revitalized with her new shoes, Erika was ready to tackle the rest of the day. We decided to look for food, but after walking for about 45 minutes with no luck in finding any food that sounded good/was open, we were starting to feel our feet. We ended up just skipping food for the time being and getting on one of the double decker open topped tour buses that takes you to all the major landmarks in the city and we wished we had done it sooner! We spent so much time walking the whole morning, yet in the hour we spent on that bus we felt we accomplished more than the rest of the day combined in terms of sight seeing. The bus passed by our hotel so instead of finishing the entire tour in one day we've saved the 2nd half for tomorrow and headed back to the hotel to rest before dinner and our show. Around 6:00 we headed out to the underground station to get back to Leicester where we had fish and chips at the Mermaid's Tail restaurant and then walked to the Queen's Theatre at 7:15 for Les Miserables. I had never seen it... but it was so amazing! Our original plan was to see Wicked, but I'm glad that fell through because I totally loved Les Mis. Fabulous.