London Travel’s 🚌— Part 1

It was the 25th of February, 2020, when we all finally planned the log awaited London Trip. It was budget travel for two days around London all on our own. So we were all ready to finally book our stay and travel.

Since train tickets at the end moment were going out of budget we decided to stick to an overnight bus of around 3 hours from our place. It was around 30 euros per head for the tickets. For our stay, we booked a dormitory which cost us around 20 euros for a night. So yes it is expensive!!

The bus was at around 5 am in the morning (which we intentionally booked so that we get the entire day for the travel). Oh! I forgot to mention about the day prior when we prepared our breakfast from our place itself. The first reason is, of course, some affordable home-cooked food and also since we would have reached very early we might not get the breakfast on time.

Food Preparation for the trip

So finally on the D-day six of us living nearby booked a cab to the pool meadow station at around 3.30 am. Yaa, I know it is quite early but we had to reach by 5 am. Couldn’t afford to miss the bus anyway.

The girl team while waiting at the Pool Meadow Bus Station

Finally at 8.00 am we reached Victoria Coach Station London. Our plan for the day included a tour around Buckingham Palace, London Bridge and Oxford Street. We decide to walk only 😅 (Only then do you get the natural feel of the streets of London).

So, our first destination was Buckingham Palace, the London royal residence and the administrative headquarters of the monarch of the United Kingdom, where we would also meet our friend visiting London from Edinburg.

Entrance to the Buckingham Palace.

In the Buckingham Palace.

It was quite busy near the palace and we decided to move on after spending around half an hour around the palace. The Buckingham Garden attached to the palace had some mesmerising views.

Next, we visited the Westminster Abbey. It was very crowded and had a long queue waiting to get in. Since we were running late we decided to see the architecture from the outside and continue with our trip.

In front of Westminster Abbey

By now we had a blurry vision of the Big Ben in construction and then the Giant London Eye. It was giant. I mean HUGE!!!

On the way to London Eye

We bought some souvenirs from the London Eye Market and took a lot of photographs. We were a group of 10 which caused us more time at one destination of course 😎.

Around the vibrant streets of the London Eye

Houses of Parliament, London on the banks of River Thames

We were really hungry by now so we were searching for some community park nearby to have the food we bought with us. But before that, we reached a museum named Florence Nightingale Museum.

Right: Museum Image(Courtesy: https://www.triphobo.com/) Left:Inside View

Inside the Museum

The museum was a quiet place with people reading and experiencing the life history of Florance Nightingale. We relaxed a bit reading the material in the museum and then searched for a park nearby to have our food. Fortunately, we got one such park nearby and headed towards that location.

Some random clicks on the way toward the park

The park was called “Archbishop Park”. It was a huge park with a tennis court and a big playground. It also had a lot of sitting space for us to relax.

Few Glimpse of the Park

After our breakfast, we moved forward to the next big destination “The Tower Bridge”. On the way, we saw a lot of beautiful streets and a few art galleries. The Shard was another major attraction on the way.

On our way to the Tower Bridge

Left: The Shard and Right: Art Gallery of the KIng’s College London

We reached Tower Bridge by 4 pm. It was way more beautiful than I dreamt of. I immediately called my family and my sister to show them “The London bridge” from the rhyme “London Bridge is falling down”. The London Bridge was right behind the Tower bridge. I wish I could actually see the London bridge falling event.

On the banks of the Thames River and the Tower Bridge

By this time it was already 5 pm and things were starting to close down. I am sure Coventry streets must already be asleep owing to the fact that it is the weekend. It was dark already so we stopped at a KFC and grabbed some food. It was an underground KFC and the menu was totally different from the Indian menu.

KFC (sorry for the bad lighting)

Half of our group was tired by now and decided to call it a day and took a cab to the dorm we booked but four of us stayed behind. We had to explore the nightlife of London and the famous Oxford Street. We had already walked for around 12 long km 🥵 and we had more energy for sure for this last part of the journey.

The Night Life of London Oxford Streets.

Finally, at around 9 pm, we decided to head back to our dorm and passed some really lonely streets to reach the destination.

Our Stay for the night

Finally, we ended this long day around London with a lot of satisfaction and happiness 🌺.

P.S: I was not planning to write about my travel during that time of my travel, hence proper credits to the photographs are missing. After two long years, it is really difficult to trace back and give individual credits. Hence, a big thank you to Anshuman, Supriya, Dibya, Pritom, Julie and Arkadeep as a few of the photos in this blog are clicked by them.

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