Alright, so me and my sister are in London because why not, I haven’t been to this city, in fact this is my first time in Europe so yea, cool. My sister visited London years ago but it didn’t really count because she basically spent no time in the actual city as she was on a bus tour for all days elsewhere within the UK, so yea, time to explore London for real, let’s see how this journey goes.
Our flight left Toronto for a night flight at like 11:45pm, so basically a full night flight of 6 hours or so. We didn’t expect to get a full dinner meal, just breakfast but that was not the case. This is the ‘pasta’ that my sister got, not bad.
I got the ‘chicken’ which is more like teriyaki chicken with mixed veg rice and other stuff like bread, cheese, salad etc. Not bad actually, except the salad, that’s shit.
After several hours of basically trying to sleep with mixed results we got our ‘breakfast’ which is just yogurt and some bread berries, didn’t eat the bread, my sister took it for later.
After a 6 or so hour flight we got to heathrow airport in one piece, good shit, time to get to the hotel via taxi.
Welcome to the London, says the smiley background wall. Proof existence, alive in the UK edition.
Getting to the taxi pickup area and some random brown guy in a uniform/suit comes up to us and says, hey do you need a taxi, where are you going. I show him our hotel on my phone and he says ok follow me, I will show you where to go, I am the taxi coordinator, he then goes presses the elevator to up back up to the lift. I am getting weird vibes, why is this guy pressing the elevator up? We just came down from there. I then say hold up, let me check something and pretend to check my phone for something while walking away. While walking away I see the real taxi coordinator in a traffic vest and go to her instead in which we go to a real taxi cab. Wow, almost got scammed or worse.
We finally get to our hotel after an extremely long taxi cab ride back into central London. Oh god, I think this is one of the worst taxi rides/costs that I have ever had. The car traffic in London is so bad, like jammed every light and street once you get into the inner city. Even if you are not moving and stuck in traffic, taxi cost is still going up. It was so bad the ride took over an hour and a half and cost like 120pounds! We told the taxi cab to let us out early a few blocks away from our hotel as walking would be faster and it was, he was like yea, makes sense and we just walked to our hotel. Man, maybe we should take the train or underground to the airport back instead of using the black cabs again.
We were still early for check in at our hotel and dropped off our bags tho, they check in at 3pm. So we decided to go and eat fish and chips because of course we have to, first meal in London. We went to a place that had been seen a few times online and in youtube videos called Fish Plaice. They are Korean owned and also have Korean fried chicken as well, jokes. This here is my order, haddock and chips.
My sister got cod. We also got a sides of mushy peas and curry sauce, which is apparently a popular sauce for chips in the UK, which is pretty unique to me I think. Overall pretty solid and good shit.
Proof of meal existence, fish and chips accomplished. Perhaps we’ll try another place again later on in the trip.
After killing time with our fish and chips lunch, our hotel room was ready for us. Inside is what I expected, a small ass room with two double/single beds, I can’t remember which type but it will do. My sister, after having living the life of luxury last time from our Vegas trip, was a bit disappointed. Indeed, the room is small but it will do, I am a bit disappointed by the bathroom tho, it’s kind of shit but whatever, the location of this place is very good, so that’s what you are really paying for.
After resting up a few and trying to take a nap for a couple of hours we headed out to check out the surrounding attractions and main tourist spots. Here is Covent Garden the main central area filled with food and other shops/vendors. Buy this time it was already past 6pm so most shops and vendors were packing up/gone for the day. It was still quite busy in the area tho.
Outside the market area has this nice old building, in front was a charlie chaplain impersonator, ok sure.
Wow, brits like curry so much they willed Japan to open a branch of coco curry in London, wow! I would never have guess to see this place here. What’s more, there is a line to get in, wow.
We then explored a bit of the china town area, which is in fact quite a very busy and popular tourist attraction. It’s filled with so many restaurants and other food places, not just Chinese food but in general all Asian food and even other food places. So many places have patios where you eat outside. People in Toronto only wished we had something like this and this populated. Our china town is ghetto max extreme, it’s like nothing like this filled with life and vibrancy.
These guys too real. Could be some Yakuza Triad shit looking between these too guys, same with sign. Baller.
Proof of adding to other white people’s tourists experience as additional Asians on the streets in china town. I like how the banner for Chinese new year is still up, I guess in this place every day is still Chinese new year.
We then walked to Leicester square which is also nearby, where they were showing some women’s football matches on the outdoor screen, cool. They have a lot of shit going on in this area, lots of tourist bait shit like m&m store, lego store and for some reason other American brands/shops, starbucks, burger king, shake shack, McDonald, kfc. It’s a bit like times square super super light chill, but not even. It’s it’s own thing, not bad.
All around the area they had these kinds of statues of famous people and or characters, such as mr bean and even harry potter.
What a baller. New pose unlocked, ‘npc wave’, look forward to seeing it more in the future along with ‘peace’ and ‘point’.
My sister said that for a second she thought that this was Char Aznable. I can see it.
We then went to Trafalgar square, which is one of the main tourist spots in London. During this time we are also getting the golden hour where you can get the best photos and lighting. Good shit.
Oh shit, here it is, Big Ben and the parliament buildings beside it, good shit. One of the main objectives completed. Looks so nice.
Proof of Big Ben existence, bait poses edition.
They also had lots of famous British leaders and politicians/famous people as statues in the area too. One of the most prominent is this Churchill which looks super gangster. Wow, that jacket and pose with the crutch, super gangster.
From behind of the church-hill statue, damn, so gangster even from the back with Big Ben in the background. They had to had done this on purpose.
What a God. Absolute unit. Peak aura.
Decided to get our London underground toes wet with a quick trial trip closeish back to our hotel area. London underground is pretty good, even inside is pretty good, better than TTC for sure, even though most lines don’t have AC which is the main downside, I mean, at least their subway system is a real system with like 11-12 different interconnected lines and not just a U with a horizontal line through it as what we have in Toronto.
Temple station, even some not popular random station looks not bad, old for sure but at least they try to keep it clean and put up art and shit to stylize the pillars.
After a slightly tiring uphill walk to our dinner space, we get to Honest Burgers, one of the more popular burger joint chains in London. It was actually quite busy and they open fairly late, like 11pm before close. Most places in London close in very random times, so you never know. Some food places close at like 8pm while others can close at like 3am, very variable. Inside looks pretty nice.
Waiting for proof of burger existence, thinking I’m going to die edition.
My sister got the ‘honest’ burger which is there signature burger, a thick patty that can be cooked like a steak, like medium, well-done, rare etc. I got a double smash patty burger. They both come with fires, no substitutions unfortunately, so more fries to eat.
We cut the burgers in half to share and try each type, overall my smash burger was better than the honest burger, which is still very good but you really can’t beat a smash burger, especially one that is done so well. We both couldn’t finish the chips/fries, too just much potatoes in one day. I guess we won’t be having any for tomorrow for sure lol.
And that ends our day basically, there is a lot more photos and stories and shit to document but I want to try and keep it shorter this time, since the Vegas trip got out of hand with photos, it was like 100 photos or more some days, so we’ll see in trying to keep it slim this time for posts.
We have a lot of shit planned for our first full day tomorrow so we’ll see what happen. Good shit.