London, London, London…

My recent trip to London was the first time I ever set foot there, and I wanted to use every single moment I had to discover this amazing city.

Our hotel was in the Paddington area, which I thought was a great place to go out from to discover London.

The first place we discovered on our first night in London was Edgware road which we were astonished to find full of Arabic restaurants and stores. There were even campaign posters for the upcoming Iraqi elections there.

In the days after that we went on to Oxford Street, Bond Street, Regent Street, Picadilly Circus, Strand, Knightsbridge…etc; checking out all the shopping malls and stores.

We visited both Regent’s Park and Hyde Park, which were both so very beautiful and breathtaking. It was so relaxing just spending time in these parks with the amazing nature and scenery around.

We checked out the famous Mme Tussauds, which was really cool. Some of those wax figures look so damn real you think they’ll move at any time or that you nearly miss them because you think it’s someone real standing there.
At Mme Tussauds we also went on this little ride called “The Spirit Of London” which took us through some of the landmark events and people in the history of London. It was nice to find Mahmoud El Fayed featured there.

We also went to the London Aquarium which was really nice and well, you know, full of fish. I especially liked the sharks, they looked really cool.
Something funny was when we were checking the different items that were found in the Thames river and we found a Tunisian 5 millimes coin there.

Right next to the London Aquarium, we hopped on to the London Eye which is really cool, overlooking the Thames and offering a great sky view of London. It goes slowly giving you the time to fully take in the city from above.

Big Ben looked better in real life than in photos I previously saw, and it was really interesting seeing the people standing in front of the parliament with all their banners opposing the war in Iraq and the government’s policies.

We thought going to London and not seeing at least one musical would be a great shame, so we went to The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty’s theatre. It was superbe, beautiful, amazing, out of this world… We absolutely loved it!
We left the theatre singing the songs all the way back to the hotel. It’s such a great experience.

Being a cinema freak, I had to go to at least one movie in London, which was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, that we saw at the Odeon cinema near Marble Arch.
I wanted to see The Chronicles of Narnia too, but there wasn’t enough time.

We walked a lot, basically more than the 5 past years of my life put together. But we also tried out the buses and the underground which were so cool. We were lucky we got to London just before they pulled the old Routemaster double-decker buses off the street and that we got to ride in one.

I took a load of really nice photos that I’ll start putting up online soon.

In short, this was an amazing week that I truly enjoyed in a city I fell in love with and wish to get to visit again.
The only downside to it is that it’s a very expensive city. Other than that everything simply rocks.