London Trip Day 1 - London City

Finished wandering at Notting Hill, we were so exhausted and the jet lag effect was emerging. But at that time, still good. We left Notting Hill, took Underground back to station Oxford Circus. We had to collect our London Pass at Regent Street. We bought a 3 days London Pass. This pass is a kind of smartcard with chips embedded, which allows people to visit a bunch of sites at a quite cheap price. Visting sites are all charged. And for every single site, the ticket fee is quite high. With a London Pass, you can visit those bunch of sites that indicated on a list within a certain period. Our pass could just last for 3 days. So need to use it wisely (at least I thought I am using it wisely, ha ha :p).

We did not use the pass right away. We planned to start using it on second day of our trip. So what we did after collecting the pass was to visit places that are free of charge. Actually, around the place that we collected the pass, there are so many famous sites to go. The most important thing is that they are free to go in. They are National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, British Museum. I longed to visit those places for quite a long time. I was so exciting at that time.

However, maybe starting sleepy, when walking around inside National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, the feeling is, not that interesting. There are quite a lot of artistic masterpieces, paintings, crafts...etc. Just not very good. Maybe I didn't know much about them. The feeling is not as good as the time I went to an exhibition of Impressionism Paintings that was held in Hong Kong. Or, maybe those things are not my cup of tea.

Here are 2 pictures of the outside of National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery.

There was a big square outside the Gallery. Fountains, benches, big staircases everywhere. An interesting thing is that there are so much people gathering. Most of them laid down or sat down relaxing, chatting with each other. There was a fat guy singing a song of Micheal Jackson. He was so enjoying. He did not care the surroundings. His ear set was on and following the music inside his ears, and sang. I was thinking that the world is so interesting. There were so much amazing things happening just you never knew.

The British Museum is worth to take a walk. You know there are so much ancient things from different countries, including China, Egypt...etc. And those ancient things could only be found in British Museum.

Visiting these places took another 2 hours. Maybe shorter. Then we walked around for a while and left, headed to Hayde Park, one of the most famous park in London.

While walking around, we found the Royal Post Letter box on a street. So antique. We cannot find one in Hong Kong since 1997, as Hong Kong is no longer a colony of UK. It is now a Special Administration Region of China and keep on influencing the world in many aspects.

At the time we were heading to Hayde Park, the day was getting late, but the sky was still bright. Sun set in London is usually at 9:00pm. Thus, we planned all the activities would be stopped before 8:30pm.

Hayde Park is a large park in London. There are many large parks in London. All are covered with grass and huge trees. I was so envy when walking in such parks. I was always thinking that, a city should have a big lung to filter away the crowded and polluted air. In Hong Kong, the lung is the country parks and they are getting smaller....sigh...

Hayde Park give you a peaceful and joyful feelings. People jogging, playing with dogs, kids, cycling everywhere. The atmosphere is so nice that we could never forget. Just at that time, started sun set. We could not stay longer there. Then we left and took bus back to our hotel.

That is the Day 1. Quite exhausted, but so exciting. That night, we took a real rest and was so prepared for the Day 2.