D18: London

Although we got back from the Military Tattoo very, very early this morning, I was still up around 8am as I needed to check-out and get my gear over to my new hotel before catching up with Trish at the Royal Albert Hall at around 10:00am.

This is the view from my room at the Novotel (would recommend staying at this hotel - it was great).

I caught a black cab to my new hotel. It looked quite ok from the outside, and the added bonus was that it was located right in the heart of Kensington and it had quite a Victorian charm about it and was just a short walk away from the Gloucester Road tube station. Given I was staying here for 6 nights, this was important!

Of course, because I was there so early I wasn't able to check in, but I was able to leave my luggage, so it was time to make my way to the Royal Albert Hall (RAH). Trish arrived and we decided to see if could arrange to do a tour of the hall later in the day. We managed to book a place in the last tour of the day, so that meant we had the rest of the day to explore. It was an absolute glorious day in London, the sun was shining and there were lots of people out enjoying the sunshine, so we walked down Exhibition Road towards the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum. We didn't stop to have a look around, but instead headed down towards Brompton Road and Knightsbridge Station. We walked passed Harrods, but because it was Sunday it wasn't open. Now how weird is this - they open between 11:30am and noon on Sunday for "browsing only"...

From Knightsbridge we caught the tube into Westminster. From here saw the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and the London Eye. It was then I had what can only be described as a brain-snap and convinced Trish that we should walk to Tower Bridge. Little did I realize just how far away it was!!! Note to self - make sure you at least have some idea of how far things are away before volunteering to walk there. I'm sure we'd already walked a couple of miles from the RAH to Knightsbridge, but I guess it's all good.

But it was a beautiful day and we really weren't in any hurry! During our "wander" we grabbed a bite to eat for lunch. There were lots of Londoners (and tourists) out enjoying the sunshine. After walking over Tower Bridge we caught the tube back to Gloucester Road Station, so I could get back to the Montana to officially check in.

We then headed back to the RAH for our afternoon tour. There were quite a few other grobies on the tour, so that was fun.

Afterwards we decided to go and grab a bite to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe on Old Park Lane (which is in-fact the first HRC to open all the way back in 1971).

Click here to see all my photos from today.

Hotel details
The Montana Hotel
(Kay's hotel rating - good)