London Day 1

The number one perk of living in Boston in my opinion, is how cheap and easy it can be to fly to Europe. From Boston to London it's basically a 5 1/2 hour flight. If you fly in the off season, you can find tickets through the cheap Scandinavian airlines for $99 one way! There is a seat reservation fee and taxes on that obviously, but still. The fact that two people can fly to Europe for well under $1,000 is pretty amazing and makes me really happy. So when I find out I have 5 vacation days left, my birthday is the same time that cheap flights to Europe are on, we knew it was meant to be!

Our flight was delayed of course, as per our luck, so we got a bit of a later start Monday than we planned, but what does it matter when you're in Europe?! We went and dropped our bags off at our hotel since we couldn't check in yet, and then since we were starving, we stopped at a little Italian cafe just down the road from us for lunch. After that we headed to the British Library to see the History of Magic Exhibit. We bought our tickets for the exhibit a couple months earlier and had really been looking forward to it! Pictures weren't allowed in the exhibit but it was amazing. It was set up so each room was dedicated to one subject in Harry Potter. Each subject/room was full of original artwork/notes from JK Rowling and Jim Kay for the books and it was so cool. There were also really cool magical artifacts from history like different sized cauldrons that were hundreds of years old, potion books and herbology books, and a big tapestry on alchemy. At the end of the exhibit they had notes from JK Rowling showing all of Order of the Phoenix mapped out. The coolest part of that was that the notes were from 2001! She's amazing and Harry Potter is amazing and I'm obsessed. After that... I lost my wallet and was absolutely sick to my stomach. We went to three different places downstairs where we were to see if they had it and no luck... We were praying so hard it would turn up and at the last place we checked downstairs they told us to ask at the front desk upstairs. Almost in tears, Greg told me it would all be fine even if it wasn't at the front desk. Trudging up stairs I was feeling worse and worse, but I was still praying and had a little hope it would still turn up. When we got to the front desk we started describing my wallet and they glanced at the back counter and there it was! Thank you good Samaritan for turning it in and being the answer to our prayers! After that close call, we headed up to check out the rest of the museum. IT WAS AMAZING! There were original notes and works from all the most well known British authors like Jane Austen, Ian Fleming, and Shakespeare. There were also notes and doodles from the Beatles. And the Magna Carta, Martin Luther's 95 theses, and documents from Henry VIII and all three of his heirs which all had my geek side freaking out and super happy. Even though we had a late start to the day and I almost lost my wallet, our day was shaping up to be pretty amazing!

The street our first B&B was on

This massive hotel we passed walking to the British Library

After the library we headed back to our B&B to officially check in. We stayed at B&B Belgravia and it was great! Breakfast in our room was included so we had everything we could want in a little fridge and cupboard in our room. The room was absolutely freezing though which really sucked especially given that I had had a chronic cough for a few weeks. After a little break we went out for dinner and to check out Harrod's, the massive English department store. We stopped for pizza at Franco Manca which is a little pizza chain place and it was so good! They cook the pizzas in a wood burning oven and completely filled us for about 8 pounds each. 

We then enjoyed walking to Harrod's while taking in all the Christmas vibes.

First glimpse of Harrod's

Ok y'all, Harrod's is a must see in London. We couldn't afford anything they sold there but it was just amazing! First of all, it is MASSIVE. If you get lost in IKEA, good luck in here because it was 4 or 5 floors and every floor was a ginormous, amazing maze full of all sorts of things. One floor had a sweets shop and food market, one had a toy store and home goods, there were fancy perfumes and clothes and makeup, anything you could need (if you needed it to be fancier and more expensive than other places) they had.

The sweets shop

The fancy elevator

We were both feeling the lack of sleep and the walking, so we headed back to our room to make sure we got plenty of sleep for our second day. Spoiler alert, thanks to the cold room, my cough and my first experience with jet lag, I didn't sleep much at all.