London - Part 1 - Into London (22nd - 25th April)

We managed to get super cheap tickets to England with Ryan air - 300kr (approx $50 AUD) return for two people.  One of our expat friends offered to have the kids for the weekend so we could get away for a quick holiday.

We stayed with my old high school friend Julian in west London and had a great time.

We left Malmö on Friday - after work we packed and then headed to our friend's place with the kids.  Once they were settled, we caught the train to Copenhagen and boarded at 10:30pm.

We landed in London Luton at 11:15pm (almost 2hr flight but we went back in timezones by an hour).  We finally got through customs by midnight and caught the shuttle to the car rental place.  It took ages to get the car - there were four people ahead of us and two servers, but one of the customers argued for over half an hour.  By the time we got the car and drove half and hour to Julian's place it was 1:30am.

We sat up talking until about 3am and then crashed out.

The next day we got up at 8:30am, had a quick breakfast and headed out to explore London.

Turns out Oysters are legal tender in London...

London uses an Oyster travel card, like the Jo-Jo card in Sweden, so we bought one each and caught the tube to London Tower.

Along the way we saw some of the new key buildings in London - I don't remember much from my last trip (in 1996) but it is very different now, with lots of glass buildings, all known by their unofficial names.

"The Walkie-Talkie", famous for focusing the sun with its concave mirror surface and melting cars

Tower Bridge and the Thames

The Shard

Dragon statue for London Bridge

London Bridge - Yet to fall down

Our next stop was the Tower of London.