London Day 1

Our first day in London! What a cool city this is. I was expecting to hate the built up metropolis and for it to be overcrowded, noisy, smelly and generally pretty unpleasant. Boy was a wrong. The countryside coming in from the airport was beautiful: canals with boats, forests, rolling grassy hillsides and pretty buildings.
Our first day here was busy and interesting. We began with finding a supposedly very good Lebanese cafe down the road in Earl's Court. It was as good as I we had heard: fantastic little Lebanese coffee shots, tapas-like platters for the olds, and smoked salmon, mushroom scrambled eggs with fresh made pita bread for me. All accompanied with some sweet croissants.
The first stop on our day's itinerary was getting deep downtown on various tubes and taking the light railway to see the Cutty Sark. The beautifully restored vessel was just as awe inspiring as I had heard, and we all thoroughly enjoyed looking around her. The size and quality of everything from hull to rigging was just excellent, with plenty of accompanying information.
Up the road from Cutty Sark was the national maritime museum. We went in looking for information on longitude (it being situated in Greenwich, 0 degrees longitude) and information on Captain Cook. Alas we found neither.. so just took advantage of the cafe for a quick refreshing drink before carrying on down the the Thames waterfront. From the Greenwich ferry berth we caught a fast cat down the river, past tall ship Tenacious, HMS Belfast, various Thames barges and the city in general. We got off the ferry near Borough Market (see tomorrow) and went to the tube station.
Zoom zoom zoom.
Up we popped in Picadilly Circus and Regent street. We had afternoon tea of salads, cakes and tea at the Hotel Royale Cafe which was.. interesting and not amazing but an enjoyable borgouis experience.
From the Royal we went to Hamleys. . The most amazing toy shop.. 6 floors of childhood delights from Lego to soft toys were seemingly never ending. Just had a god look around before leaving as it was CHAOTIC. But very cool.

I'm writing this a little late so admittedly may be missing details or not remembering as much as I'd like. . IL try to keep more on top of it in future.
ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM
Dinner this day came in the form of another multicultural Earl's Court experience. This time a wonderful Japanese place with great dumplings, tempura soba noodle soup, sweet chilli beef and teppenyaki noodles. Very nice and very enjoyable. But definitely was time for bed back in our little apadtment.

P.s. SQUIRRELS!! SO MANY WILD SQUIRRELS!!!Read more