New Year in London: Part Two

We could see  "The London Eye" (The ginormous Ferris Wheel) from Buckingham palace so began to head that way. We went through a park that was filled with birds and squirrels and people feeding them. The squirrels were so funny because they would walk right up to anyone who was holding their hand out for them. Logan and I found some peanut shell pieces on the ground and started to try and get the squirrels attention. They have super soft paws!

 ^ First sight of the London Eye

 ^ Big Ben was across a bridge from the London Eye. Big Ben was my favorite thing I saw on our trip. 

^ Big Ben from the bridge that is later crammed with people to see the fireworks show.

There was a lot of walking on this trip. A LOT. After seeing Buckingham palace, The London Eye, and Big Ben we did a lot of wandering. We were trying to make our way to The London Bride and The Tower of London but both ended up being a lot further than we expected so we finally turned around. We will probably visit both of those things on another trip.

 ^ In the distance is the London Bridge

^ Starting to fill withe people for the fireworks show

 ^ I don't know what this place is but there was an ice skating rink in the middle.

 ^ We had lunch at a delicious Italian place across from Waterloo Station. Logan was excited to visit Waterloo Station because a scene from one of the Bourne movies was shot there.

^ Coffee and Desert Break from all our Walking







As we were walking we saw a man dressed as a cowboy and as Shrek. We saw them taking pictures with people so we took some also. What we didn't realize is that they were charging for the pictures! We were scammed out of £8! We also came across a man having people choose which box his ball was under.. this was highly entertaining but we definitely did not participate. The guy was very smooth. There was also a place where all these people were painted in a shiny metallic paint. They were all moving around and scaring people (one tapped me on the shoulder from behind and made me squeal) but there was just one who was sitting so still you couldn't tell if he was fake or not. Finally he moved but it was amazing the amount of people circled around him to try and figure him out.

We had a LOT of time to kill. We planned on riding the London Eye once it got dark but by the time we got to it they had already closed it and started blocking off the streets for fireworks. It was early so we were surprised and disappointed but we found a place to have dinner and sat there for hours so that we could stay warm and not be standing for a little while. The streets were being blocked off everywhere. The restaurant was right off the bridge that we wanted to be on for the fireworks (between the London Eye and Big Ben). Once we finally left we went to the bridge to wait. There were so many people. I have never seen so many people before but after a long wait and people watching, midnight arrived.

 ^ Lights under a bridge

 ^ SO many people!

 ^ Almost midnight!

 ^ A glance at some of the people.. and this was just on our bridge..

 ^ No doubt this was the most amazing fireworks show I have ever seen.
( A glimps of it is in the video below )

^ Happy New Year :)

Our journey home was the most hectic, annoying, chaotic experience. We were trying to get to Waterloo station where we thought our train to Cambridge was supposed to leave from. A walk that would normally take about twenty minutes took us an hour and forty minutes because of all the people. We were worse than sardines in a can. We were barely moving through the massive crowd of people. Once we finally got into the train station we saw that all the gates were open. No one needed to buy tickets - they just got on the train and go. (we had already bought our online so this was unfortunate) We found out that there wasn't even a train leaving for Cambridge from that station. After talking to 3 people with broken English we were finally told we could catch the tube - no charge - to Kings Cross and our train would leave from there. When we arrived at Kings Cross we were told the train just left and we missed the last train to leave by seconds. We had to wait two hours for the station to open back up and even longer for our train. We were cold and exhausted but we finally made it home around nine in the morning. It was a long trip but definitely worth it. We will probably never go to London for New Years Eve again but it was a great experience that Logan and I were glad to have. 

I hope everyone has an absolutely fantastic 2013!