London is always on everyone’s list so I eventually added it to mine to see what the fuss is all about. As a long-term British accent and tea lover, I was also keen to see whether there would be any big differences culturally between there and Australia. We are after all, a colony of England. I booked a private room at an Airbnb house and mentally prepared myself for how expensive this week would be. To give you an estimate, it’s about 0.45 Australian cents to 1 pound!

One of the first things I did a walking tour to tick off all the main sights. I chose Sandemann’s Free Walking Tour which brought us to Trafalgar square, Buckingham palace and Westminister were covered on the tour (free walking Sandemann’s). Also on my list were the British Museum, Natural History Museum, V&A, Oxford St and Borough markets (to try the chorizo burger from Brindisa, it was delicious!).

What I didn’t expect, for some weird reason, was how many people there were everywhere at any given time. I was told to avoid the tube during peak hour and from what I’ve heard, you don’t want to be there at that time anyway. Even out of these hours, I found tube stations FULL of people. This picture above was taken at the Natural History Museum and the line to see the dinosaur exhibition! I was also pleasantly surprised by how many parks there were within the city centre. Sydney also has a Hyde Park but is miniscule compared to the London Hyde Park! Near Buckingham Palace were also Green and St Jame’s Park which were both a scene of autumn colours. Ahh, it was so pretty!

One of things that wasn’t initially on my list was London Tower: the old fort looking onto the Thames. It wasn’t until I was walking past after my tower bridge walk that I stood outside and thought ” hey, this is pretty cool” and that I would pay to go in. I highly recommend the free tour that they run every 30mins with the beefeaters. It’s the perfect place to entertain young kids and anyone who is interested in forts and medieval times.

Other activities that I ended up doing were booking tickets to see 2 musicals. Coming from Sydney where there is usually only 1 major musical on at a time, I had a field day trying to decide what to see. I ended up picking Billy Eliot and Wicked. I preferred Wicked which had excellent staging and costuming. Plus, who can pass up an opportunity to hear Defying Gravity live?! I got my tickets from TKTS which is located in Leicester Square and they offer discount tickets too.

I’m happy to have checked London off my list but to be completely honest, London wasn’t really for me. I found it too similar culturally to what I know and what I know is not what I want to experience away from home. It is definitely a place to check out, I think the number of bars out number the number of shops sometimes! By the way, the public transport there is amazing. However, the road traffic is not.

Is London on your list? What did you like and/or not like about London? Let me know in the comments!

-S.