Tea & croissant: Hello, London

Quite like our very own KLIA, the London's Heathrow Airport is located quite faraway from the city. You could either opt for a cab or take the Heathrow Express to get to town. There is a ticketing counter before the airport exit. You can purchase tickets for just the express train or to one of the city stations. The only problem is figuring out which station to change trains to get to your final destination.

Once you're on-board, do checkout their promotional video. It has a Black Mirror vibe to it. Creepy but exciting.

Before my trip, I did rather extensive research on the stations and interchanges. Unfortunately, it didn't come to of much use as that particular station was closed for rail works. fml.

The River Thames. Having heard so much about this river, it's good to finally have a look at it. I suppose it is like our Klang river. Almost just as murky but definitely not as dirty.

Such an English picture except for the weather. Surprisingly, all the years of listening to fellow Englishman (and woman) about the depressive London weather turned out to be lies. For that day, at least.

For the uninitiated, London weather is (supposedly) dreary, cloudy if not rainy, downright bleak. That Sunday, it was a lovely sunny day with clouds but no possibility of rain. It was quite the perfect day for sightseeing on foot. 

The Royal Horseguards hotel. 5 star hotel which had shoddy beginning.

The funny thing is I managed to get tanned during my trip. In Europe. Of all the places.

Passenger capsule of the London Eye. It's large enough to walk about in. Or have a marriage proposal.

Upskirting the wheel. The queue is not as bad as Paris' tourist attraction but I gave this a pass.

From across the city.

Although it was nearing to spring, the weather was still quite cold. Very cold as a matter of fact.

The amount of walking we did that day was quite astounding.

Look what I spotted.

The one building that Hollywood doesn't get tired off bombing. Perhaps the most destroyed icon in films after the White House.

Palace of Westminster. Big Ben. The very icons of London. In case if you are wondering, the road was closed due to the London Marathon.

Hello, Ben. To be honest, I wasn't prepared for London so when they asked me (the sole foreigner among the group who hasn't been to London before) where I would like to go, my sleep-deprived brain came up with this.

Was it worth the visit? Well, it is quite big.

The place was sprawling with equal parts visitors and locals, cheering on the runners.

Their parliament. A far cry from our boring government block.

We slowly made our way to Buckingham Palace because who wouldn't like to see how the royalties live. The crowd was rather massive that at some points, we had to squeeze into narrow walkways.

London is littered with churches just like Taipei is with temples. Except the churches are grander, bigger.

While I was aware that London is a famous tourist spot, I really wasn't ready for the crowd.

Is it because it's a first world that they have many reasons to run for? Different types of cancer, different feminist reasons, the only reason I'd need to run for are responsibilities. Or because I'm really fat.

You can obviously tell the locals apart from the tourists. However, the locals don't all like the city as it's crowded and expensive to live in.

Between London and KL, the former is certainly a better city but that maybe because I haven't spent enough time there.