London

For the first time in six years we didn't go skiing during our winter holidays. A year ago, we had planned to go to Tschiertschen again this year but alas, it wasn't meant to be. For a while I considered going to another location for a skiing holiday, but neither Antonia nor Yannick seemed very keen on snow and mountains and spending time on the slopes is far too expensive to do it half assed.

Then, while we were sitting in the cable car up to the Flumserberg right after christmas, we started dreaming about other places we could go instead and very soon London was at the top of Antonia's list and she convinced me to give it another try. We checked the flights and found three seats on an easy jet flight in the middle of February.

We stayed in a small appartement next to Gloucester Street. The location was perfect, very close to the tube and there were lots of restaurants and a mall in walking distance. The accomodation was ok, there was a living room at street level with a kitchen nook and then there were two bedrooms and bath below street level. There are a lot of this below stairs appartments in most of the big London houses, I guess, they used to be for servants. Frankly I was a bit scared in our bedrooms. I could hear so much noise from the street and from right outside our window in the middle of the night and it felt as if the wall was far too flimsy to keep anybody from entering. Nothing happened though, I guess it was just my overactive imagination ;-)

We were lucky with the weather. Apart from a bit of rain on the day we arrived there was a lot of sunshine and while it was definitely still winter, it felt a tiny bit like spring as soon as we were out in the open. We spent a lot of time outside so it was a very welcome surprise to be dry most of the time. Among our highlights of the three and a half days we stayed in London were:

• a long, wet walk along the Themse 

• a visit to Tate Modern Museum and especially the view from the eleventh floor

•  a tour with the river bus to Greenwich

  

• the view from the Shard at sunset

• a day at the Harry Potter Museum 

• a sunny walk across Hyde Park

• watching Black Panther at a London cinema
• breakfast, lunch and dinner at different coffee shops and pubs

Definitely a lot of typical touristy stuff ;-)

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked London. I've been there a few times and it always felt too big and busy and slightly scary, but not this time.

I really enjoyed spending time with Antonia, she is an excellent travel compagnion and I can't wait to go to Cananda with her and I was rather sad that Yannick and I didn't manage to find a good connection very often. I think we both wanted to get along, we just couldn't figure out how to.