Day 2

We awoke around 8AM so we could leave early to London and do a bit of sightseeing and then afterwards shopping. We went to the nearby M&S and bought some food for the day and went back to the hotel. At the hotel we checked the times again for the buses and soon left to catch our bus. While walking towards the bus stop, Noa realized that her Oyster card was still in the hotel. We hurried back and searched through our luggage, but no Oyster card. I had a spare one so we decided she could use that one so we were off to the bus stop again. While waiting, Noa went through her bag one more time and found her card. All that time, it was in her bag.
We took the bus to Hounslow-West station and went from there to London using the Piccadilly line. It took less than one hour to get there and the closer we got to the city, the more people entered the train. Today was the London Marathon so we already expected it was going to be really busy. We arrived around 12 AM in London and we immediately went shopping, since the shops were open until 6 PM. We went to various shops and bought some stuff, not too much. We also entered the Lush store because many people have told me that it was really nice. As we entered the shop, you immediately smelled all the bath bombs and body products. It was nice, not too much. We walked towards the bath bombs and one of the staff approached us, explained about the bath bombs and we chatted a bit until she left again. No less than a minute passed and another worker talked to us, he asked if we had been here before and if we knew much about everything, which we both didn’t. We chatted with him a lot and he asked where we were from, he loved the Netherlands. He asked us advice about some cities that are nice but not too much for tourism, so the exact opposite of Amsterdam. He talked about his favorite bath bomb, the frozen one. That was a limited edition and only available at that store. His second choice was the intergalactic. That was basically when you use that bath bomb, the water would become a galaxy, not all at once but slowly. It was like watching through a telescope, he said. After another person talked to us, we both bought a bath bomb and left the store.
We went to some other shops and soon it was already 6 PM. There were a lot of nice restaurants in Covent Garden so we decided to go there. We had to go with use of the Tube and when we arrived, there were people everywhere. It was busier than ever because the marathon had ended and everybody wanted to go home. We waited for a few minutes and we entered a train that was less busy. We got off and there were a lot of people waiting to use the lift so we took the stairs. Not the best idea because we realized that it had 193 steps. We walked around Covent Garden and found a cute small restaurant called Bella Italia, which had pizza and pasta. I decided to go for the Pasta Bolognese which was delicious. There were Dutch people sitting next to us so we chatted a bit with them as well. At the end, we ordered these shots bottles filled with different desserts, such as cheesecake, cherry panna cotta and tiramisu. They were absolutely delicious and it didn’t cost that much at all.
We went back to the hotel again and had to wait for the bus to arrive, which we just missed so we had to wait for 40 minutes. We arrived back in the hotel and prepared for the first day at Vanderlande tomorrow.