London - Glance through visited places

Day visit on 18th April 2014

The first thing we did on arrival at London St Pancras train station was to change our Euros to Pound. After that, we joined a long queue to purchase a metro passes. Nothing much to worry about those things as everyone is speaking English and you would have no troubles communicating with everybody on all matters you wish for; i.e. getting direction. I would discourage for those who has limited time in London to buy London daily passes as it will be waste. The fact is nothing much can be done or visited in a short hours. Well, we have initially listed few places to visit before shopping times. However, our group became bonkers when we found Clark's, Marks & Spencer boutiques etc along the street and started shopping henceforth. 

Following a metro map, we chose to stop at London's Bridge station not knowing that it was not the nearest station to reach London's Tower Bridge. Please take note that London's Bridge is not London's Tower Bridge, make sure you add "Tower"when searching for it. Lucky that the Tower Bridge seated not far from London bridge, hence, nobody complained when we had to walk a bit to reach the place. In addition, the views around the Thames river are worth to see though it was surrounded with modern building. 

After enough photo shots as London Tower Bridge, we had coffee at Starbucks hoping to enjoy their free wifi. Unfortunately, the crowds and poor Internet connection forced us to sit Starbucks outside foyer with a view of Thames river and Tower London, a royal palace. The ladies were only thinking to shop, so, no one would want to enter the huge palace surrounded with modern buildings. We passes visit from the internal side, rather appreciating the historical story of the palace from the outside look.

From there on, we took a tube to reach Hyde Park not knowing that the station we stopped leading us to Kensington Park. Maybe at that time all of us were not concentrated well on the map, as our minds were calculating what to buy at the Oxford Street later on. Kensington Park has equivalent facilities as in Hyde Park, where we decided to stop for prayer and lunch. 

Incidentally we found Royal Albert Hall while searching for Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park which were in our original itinerary. By this time, our group mutually agreed to stop searching in the dark (especially when our heart were no longer wish to visit, but shopping) to drop the 2 places. Instead we went ahead to Oxford Street. 

We finally arrived at Hyde Park entrance (see below photo), but the girls quickly assured me that they do not wish to walk anymore. The view and the environment would be the same with Kensington Park, thus no point to enter, they said. I nodded my agreement. We then, took a bus to Oxford street.There's a Malaysian lady who happened heading towards the same direction, in the bus that we took. She was in London visiting her son, who studied in local university. She bought a fortnightly bus/metro passes at a very good rate.

I've been searching for our shopping photos but we could not find any. Apparently, everyone was too busy shopping along Oxford Street to bother about photos. We were monitoring the time left to spend before ending the trip and headed back to London St Pancras for our train back to Paris.

That was how we spent our time in less than 8 hours in London city.