ALPHABET TRAVEL CHALLENGE

Fourteen Hours In London

A to Z of my favorite travel destinations — L is for London

In case you didn’t notice I love to travel. Short trips, long trips, it doesn’t matter as long as I’m able to explore a new city or country.

I even try to take advantage of layovers. Anything longer than a couple of hours and I want to explore whatever city I’m in. I think the shortest was a five-hour layover in San Francisco.

So the question was what do we do in London on a 14-hour layover to Africa? I was traveling with my workmate Deb, and while she had been to London years before, it was my first time so I wanted to make the most of it in what little time we had.

We arrived at Terminal 4 at Heathrow bright and early at about 6:30 in the morning after an all-nighter. We faced a massive lineup at British Customs and Immigration but the line moved fast and we got through there pretty fast. We hopped on the shuttle to Terminal 3 (where we would be departing from) and dropped our backpacks in passenger storage and then hopped on the tube into London.

We got to Leicester Square in about 45 minutes and just started walking. It was still pretty early so there were a lot of people just rushing around going to work, and stores were just beginning to open their doors for the day.

We wandered around aimlessly taking pictures of all the highlights and uniquely British sights.

We made our way over to Buckingham Palace… you can actually visit London without seeing this tourist attraction but why would you? It is certainly a huge draw for tourists and monarchists. There were massive crowds all around the Palace.

We saw the changing of the guard as we were walking up the mall, but it was too far away for pictures. We did see them later at the Palace Guards Museum.

We also saw the BBC, India House, the Lyceum theatre, and we hung out in Trafalgar Square.

There was an art exhibit of eggs and egg cups outside the National Gallery, and across the square was a giant tv set up to show the European Cup soccer matches.

Outdoor viewing seemed to be a popular thing. We passed by a place called Somerset House and decided to check it out. We entered the courtyard and there was this huge screen at one end of it. People would sit on the grass and watch films on the big screen in the evenings.

We crossed a bridge and managed to get some great pictures of London, Big Ben, and the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye from that vantage point.

As we continued walking through the street we saw a security guard using a hand mirror to check under cars for bombs. I’m not sure if that made us feel more secure or less.

I had let my cousins know I would be in London for a few hours so they took the train from Chichester for lunch. We didn’t have a lot of time so we decided to just go into a pub for a British lunch. We just had bangers and mash and a pint and the bill came to more than a hundred bucks Canadian! But at least we had a great visit with my relatives.

After lunch, we were exhausted after our red eye flight and then hours spent walking through central London’s streets, so we decided to head back to the airport. We said goodbyes to my cousins and got back on the Tube to get back to Heathrow.

When we got there I just wanted to have a nap and wasn’t looking forward to crashing on an airport bench or on the floor. Luckily we discovered something called Yotel. We were able to rent a room for 4 hours, so we managed to enjoy a nice 3-hour nap and had a shower so we were refreshed for our long flight ahead. The rooms were clean and quiet and it was a great way to recharge our batteries in the middle of a long trip.

I hope this encourages you to leave the airport and go exploring on your next layover, wherever it is. Just give yourself enough time to get back to the airport.

Thank you for reading. For more of my favorite travel destinations, you can check out my list of stories: