Last time I posted was just a couple of days before my parents arrived from Brazil to visit me here in Germany. They stayed a few days just walking around Nuremberg and shooping while I worked, but then I took some days off and we headed to London and Amsterdam where we meet a family friend with her grown-up son and my brother with his wife.
So we were 7 and I took the role of guide and translator. Yeah, so not much of vacation time for me.
Anyway, let me share here a few tips incase you plan to make it to London someday:
- A single journey ticket in the public transportation cost 4 pounds (!!!) but you can get a day ticket for 5,60 (or maybe a little bit more depending on the zones you wanna ride within)
- Hop-on/Hop-off sightseeing tours are awesome. Unless you really love going around with a guide book, save the money (guide books are super expensive!) and pay for the tour. In a huge city like London, you can even get a 48 hours-ticket and enjoy it without hurrying. But really, 24 hours should be good enough: take the whole tour at once, just seeing the places (maybe marking on the map the ones you wanna really stop later to see) and listening to whatever the guide tells you about the city and places. Once you've seen it all in passing, you can take your time to see your favorite spots without any hurry. If 24 hours isn't enough to see it all, it doesn't matter cause you've already identified ur favorites and the next day you can buy the public transportation day ticket and easily find the corresponding metro station: it's cheaper than the 48 hours tour and the metro system in London is great! (btw, these tours often offer multi-language audio options)
- If you do the hop-on and off tour thing, make sure to choose one that includes a boat ride to the price (most do!) and enjoy a beautiful ride on the Thames: fancy isn't it?! ;)
- Unless you really dislike this sort of thing, do go to a musical. There are more than 20 musicals playing in London so, plenty of choices... I've seen the Phantom of the Opera my first time there (2006), then Les Miserable (2007) and this time I saw Billy Elliot. Superb. I'm a huge fan of the Billy Elliot movie, having always loved movies with dancing showcased; the musical is simply fantastic!
- Don't miss (at least) a quick walk through the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square. You don't need to be a fan or connoisseur of the arts to enjoy it; there you get a chance to see masterpieces from Monet, van Gogh, Caravaggio, Renoir (to name a few)... all for FREE... yeah, no admission fee! (most museums in London are free like that including the TATE Modern)
So, enough for now... I hope this helps you :)
Next posting: Amsterdam!
