London, England

This trip to London was my second, I spent 3 days there during my first trip to Europe with my mom and brother 3 years earlier.

London is one of my favorite cities and there will always be new things to see and do there so I was happy to go for a second time with Cecily and Madison.

(Thu. 3/3- Sun. 3/6)

Transportation & Hostels: $300 & $80

We took the bus from Lanjaron to Granada on Thursday where we then bought a bus ticket to Malaga.

From there we took a taxi to our hostel, Barlovento.

I always told the taxi driver we got from the bus station to take us to Los Prados, Hotel El Romerito, then we would walk across the street to Calle Barlovento, the door you are looking for has a 3 above it and is on the left.

You will probably have to call the owner to come and check you in, but he lives on the next street over so it never took long.

You can take the bus for a Euro or so to the center of town for dinner or just to explore beautiful Malaga or just get a taxi.

I always booked it on Booking.com.

I used Booking a lot more than Hostelworld because you could opt for free cancellation and you don't have to pay a deposit.

As you'll see if you read about my other trips, we took a liking to Barlovento.

We stayed here every time we had a flight to catch from the Malaga airport.

There are hotels near the airport but the airport is actually in the middle of a bunch of highways so you can't easily walk there no matter where you stay.

This hostel doesn't have 24 hour reception so we always had to call to let the owner know we were there to let us in but he would take us to the airport in the morning for 19 Euros. It's about a 20 minute ride.

Friday morning we were picked up outside and brought to the airport where we boarded our flight to London.

We used EasyJet for this trip.

On this trip, a flight attendant dropped a huge bag of what felt like rocks on my face from the overhead bin... I started crying, mostly from the shock, and all I got was a "Oh sorry, hope you're alright."I guess that's what you get when you fly budget airlines!

I just used Google search most of the time when looking for flights and it would pull up the cheapest options for the time I wanted.

We arrived in London at one at Gatwick airport.

We bought roundtrip tickets to the Gatwick Express which took us to the Victoria station where we bought Oyster cards and loaded them up with 20 Pounds for the Tube (Subway) and buses.

We took the metro to the stop nearest our hostel, Hostel Safestay London Elephant & Castle.

It was a little expensive but, it is London. I was pleased with our stay, just bring a lock to lock up your bags and your own towel, or you can rent one.

We met some guys from London in Lagos later on who told us that Elephant&Castle is a sketchy part of town, but oh well, we lived!

We had friends who stayed at The Generator London, that enjoyed that hostel as well!

We were traveling with three and had a 4 bed room so we were worried about who we would be sharing our room with.

It turned out to be a girl that was in bed by the time we arrived back at night and left before the sun rose the next morning. We only stayed two nights and the extra bed was empty the first night.

On Sunday we took the metro to Victoria and took the Gatwick Express back to the Gatwick airport.

We bought tickets outside the Airport in Malaga for a bus back to Granada but the buses don't run very late on Sundays so we missed the last bus back to Lanjaron from Granada.

So we ended up taking an expensive taxi but it was worth making it back to our clean clothes and not having to pay to stay another night in Granada.

Things to do: $120

Our first night we walked around South Bank where the London Eye is, and crossed the Bridge to the other side of River Thames where we walked around Parliament and listened to Big Ben sing his song.

Parliament was particularly memorable for me because I dropped my phone through the gate trying to take a picture and had a Sergeant on his hands and knees with a broom, to retrieve it for me.

After tea, we went to see Wicked at the Victoria Theater. We had nose bleed seats and the show was still absolutely wonderful, I had my first Pimms from their concession stand, too.

We saw the colorful houses in Notting Hill... I actually just saw the movie a few weeks ago!

We explored the area by the river near the London Tower Bridge.

Places to eat: $150

We wandered through the Borough Market, wishing we hadn't just eaten so we could have tried more of the food besides Madison's macaron. It was one of the best I've had (I had to have a bite.)

We had afternoon tea at the British Museum. Afternoon Tea is one of my favorite things to do in London and the British Museum had a great tea, in a great atmosphere, at only 20 euro a person. We were so full from our tea at 4 that we didn't need dinner.

I ate at Giraffe on the South Bank on my first trip to London so we went there again for dinner our first night there. It was good and the sorbet was a really refreshing dessert.

Ask anyone on the trip and they'll tell you I'm obsessed with Eat and Pret a Manger. They're basically grab & go (or grab & sit) chain restaurants on what seems like every corner in London and across Europe. We had lunch at Eat in Notting Hill and Pret at the airport before we left.

We frequented the Crepe stand on the river by Parliament. It doesn't get much better than sitting on the steps by the river with a view of London and hot banana Nutella crepe.

Weather:

Cold, cloudy, and rainy. That is what it's known for.

My total for London was: $650 (ouch, but it was worth it)

It was my most expensive weekend trip, with Amsterdam coming in a close second.