London, England

Okay, I couldn't go five weekends in a row without getting out of this freakin' country so I booked a trip to the UK to see some friends. EasyJet was having a 40% off discount at the time of my booking so it only cost me 60 euros - woo hoo! Anyways, a friend of mine living in the UK just moved there recently and hadn't visited London, but I lived there previously for 4 months and have friends there I wanted to visit, so I figured I'd hop on over on the hour long flight to show him around.

We only had 2 days in the city, so we didn't get to spend too much time checking the sights out in depth. We saw most of the major tourist stuff from the outside - Tower Bridge, Tower of London, Trafalger Square, Leicester Square, Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, St. James's Park, Wellington Arch, Hyde Park, etc. I've seen it all before, but it's been a while (~8 years) and was still nice to see it all over again. I wouldn't mind going back and seeing more, such as inside some of these places, and visiting less touristed attractions.

The only killer about London is the price though. The USD these days is a whopping 1.95 to the GBP!!! I went out to dinner on Friday night with my Morgan Stanley friends at a typical restaurant in SoHo. A dinner for five (including appetizer and desert for some) and perhaps 2-3 bottles of wine cost us 200 freaking pounds! Perhaps you wouldn't bat an eye at a US$40 dinner, but at 40 pounds a head, that's almost 80 bucks! I was about to say that I might have broken my record on the most expensive dinner I've ever bought for myself, but I can't really say that I bought this dinner either (it's so nice being a girl sometime). I guess compared to the euro, the pound isn't as bad (1 GBP = 1.5 EUR), but still... ouch.

Well, this was a much needed break from all the drama back here in the Hague. And in 10 days, I'm out of here for the holidays to Tokyo. Can't wait.

Pictures from London are here.