Get ready for a long and semi-eventful day. Susana and I thought we bought train tickets for 1 pound to London that left at 7am. However, we didn’t read the ticket and it actually meant coach. When we got to the train station, we waited until there was about 15 minutes to go. When we saw that our “train” time wasn’t on there, we went to ask somebody about it. They told us it meant coach, and the station was about 1 mile away. We had 15 minutes, so we walked as fast as we could and made it right on the dot. It was so tiring! The bus was pretty comfy; it actually had leather seats haha. After 2 hours, we made it to Victoria Station and headed to China Town by metro. It was about 10am and everything was closed! Our original plan was to eat dimsum but since the places all opened at 11am, we went to a small breakfast place and I had a wonton soup. It felt so good to finally eat restaurant Chinese food (although I must say the filing was definitely not as good as the ones my mom makes haha). I then bought some Asian pastries and we headed to a medical museum called: Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. This place was amazing. Admission was free and inside was two stories full of collections of different bones, organs, surgical tools, etc of all different kinds of animals/humans ranging from as early as the 1800s to now. Everything was really cool, and I definitely prefer these kinds of museums over the typical European art ones. We spent about 4 hours in there and headed to our afternoon tea, which started at 3pm.
The tea place was really cute, each person paid 18 pounds and they served us a three layer platter of sandwiches, scones, cupcakes, brownies, cookies, etc. And of course, we had tea. We basically stuffed our faces with as much as we could to get our money’s worth. There was also one free refill of food, so we did that and took the rest home haha (it’s actually still sitting in the fridge right now…) We stayed there for about 2 hours. I wish we had these kinds of places in America, to just sit, drink tea, and chat. It felt really relaxing.
After that, we walked along Regent Street and then into China Town again. Regent Street is kind of like a Times Square, with the lights, shops, and people. In addition, China Town at night was so pretty! There were lanterns that hung down every street and lots and lots of non-Asian people. It was also really clean. I loved it. We went to a Chinese grocery shop, where everything was so much cheaper than the markets here, and I bought tofu lol.
Our last stop of the day was platform 9 ¾ which was in King’s Cross. We spent forever trying to find it because it was at the very end of platform 8, tucked in a corner. There were about 3 groups of tourists taking endless pictures, so we grabbed the spots and took a few pictures ourselves. I know it’s kinda lame, but it was something I had to do while in London haha, even if it cost a subway ride there and back.
We then rode the bus from Victoria Station back and got back around midnight. And this was our 18 hour Saturday trip to London.
LOVE afternoon tea! And you CAN have those in the US. Lots of places have afternoon teas. Usually nice hotels and such. Try one when u come back! Go glad you enjoyed London. =)
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