What a day! Our first day in London was filled with many buildings, many steps, and a lot of firsts. We started our day leaving the hotel at 8:45 and began with a short walking tour of the area surrounding our hotel. My favorite part of the walking tour was Bedford Square because of the town homes with colored doors and window boxes and because the second you stepped in, the sounds of the city disappeared. We then visited the Building Center, but unfortunately the large model of London was gone. After that, we took a double decker bus to St. Paul’s Cathedral and explored The Barbican and the Museum of London before grabbing lunch at Pret and going into St. Paul’s. St. Paul’s was so amazing! The amount of detail and the vast scale was overwhelming, and the views from the top were incredible. After sketching and exploring the cathedral for a few hours, we headed off on our own to Abbey Road, and took our first Tube ride, which was surprisingly easier than expected. We stood in a crowd of people all darting out into a congested street to get their pictures taken. We then ventured down into Little Venice and ate at an Italian restaurant called Red Pepper. This meal was very odd as the staff all spoke Italian and also had very thick British accents, so communicating with them was interesting to say the least. Finally, after dinner, we took the Bakerloo tube line to Oxford Street and walked back to the hotel from there, grabbing cookies from a street side bakery on the way.

This picture was taken in front of St. Paul’s, looking down Fleet Street.