Just like that, Italy was over, and it was time to move on to London. To get to the airport from the island, the easiest way (though not the fastest) is to board an Alilaguna public water boat for about 15 euros one way. The boat takes about 50 minutes and takes you straight to the airport. That's right, boat dock right at the airport. Pretty cool if you ask me.
We booked a flight on EasyJet which is a budget airline in Europe, similar to a Southwest for us in America. Problem is the airline sucks! They allow you one free carry-on bag per person. No, I don't mean one carry-on and one personal item, I mean one per person. The seats were horrible. It felt like sitting on a cardboard box, or something where when you sit up, the wood pops out, then when you sit back down, you push it back in. But, you know, I guess you get what you pay for, and it was a good deal if I remember correctly.
We arrived in London at the Gatwick airport. I think in distance, the main part of London is almost twice the distance from Gatwick than it is from Heathrow. However, getting there by train seems to take almost the same amount of time. So, if Gatwick is cheaper, might as well.
Our hotel, Thistle Piccadilly was located right in the heart of Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square.
It's a really nice hotel, and not far from an Underground station (public subway system). From the hotel, it's about a 5 minute walk to Trafalgar Square.
Compared to researching restaurants and eateries in Italy, I spent probably about 1/100th of the time researching restaurants in London, so we went with our hotel's recommendation. They pointed us to Sherlock Holmes restaurant.
The first floor is a pub, and the second floor is a restaurant.
I ordered Dr. Watson's Traditional Sunday Lunch with chicken and giant Yorkshire pudding. Don't know what Yorkshire pudding is? Neither did I, but it's that bread thing on top of my chicken. The chicken was pretty good. Sophy got Mrs. Hudson's Homemade Steak & Ale pie. The pie was not bad, though it was not the best we had in London.
After dinner, we just walked around. Found our way to a bridge with a view of Big Ben and the London Eye (that big ferris wheel looking thing).
When the London Eye was built in 2000, it was the biggest ferris wheel in the world. The current largest is the "High Roller" in Vegas, completed just this year.
We made our way back to Leicester Square, right outside our hotel.
Here's a look at Chinatown, not far from all the action.
As we walked along, I noticed it was literally casino after casino!
Out of curiosity, we went into the casino above. It was pretty nice inside. Had a few table games and slot machines. Not a whole lot changes, you walk over to the baccarat table and there's a whole bunch of asian people huddled around the table. There were two noticeable differences: 1) They let you play on top of other players money without any problems. I guess they're more open to that in local casinos, but definitely not Vegas; and 2) the Roulette wheel only has a single zero, no double zero.
Fortunately or unfortunately, we didn't play.
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