{"id":258,"date":"2005-04-10T17:27:19","date_gmt":"2005-04-11T01:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/?p=258"},"modified":"2005-04-10T17:27:19","modified_gmt":"2005-04-11T01:27:19","slug":"london-day-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/2005\/04\/10\/london-day-1-2\/","title":{"rendered":"London: Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had an overnight flight and arrived at my hotel for the weekend – the Alhambra<\/a>. I chose it because it was inexpensive (these next 2 nights are on me) and centrally located (a short walk from the Kings Cross tube station). My flight got me in at 6:15AM and I got to the hotel a little before 9AM. Since the room wasn’t ready yet (I chose one of the “fancy” rooms with a bathroom and a shower in it) I went out exploring.<\/p>\n

I didn’t fire up the e-mail Schulte sent me about places to go, so I picked up a tube map and picked something that looked familliar – the Tower of London.<\/p>\n

\"Tower<\/a><\/p>\n

This place was pretty cool. They had actual Beefeaters<\/a> show you around, and they gave an excellent tour. There were a lot of interesting stories about people who died here (mostly beheadings). Also within the Tower of London is a building with the crown jewels<\/a>. One of the sceptres had an absolutely disgusting diamond of 530 carats. At that size, it just plain looks fake. Evidently it is the largest cut diamond in the world.<\/p>\n

After the Tower of London I made my way back to the hotel for a nap. Then I headed out and found a brochure for the Hard Rock Cafe. Schulte had informed me that this is actually the original Hard Rock and not some knock-off tourist trap. The wait for dinner was an hour and a half, so I moved on and had dinner elsewhere. Schulte wanted a T-shirt, although I found the cheapest one was 13 pounds (about $25). A weak dollar does not make for good souvenir shopping. Although, even if the dollar were stronger this shirt would still be hilariously overpriced.<\/p>\n

I ended up going to a pub near my hotel for dinner. They had good, “extra cold” Guiness on tap and the bartender made sure to leave a clover on top. The bar was pretty funny – I could kind of make out the “no smoking” sign amidst all the smoke. I then ate one of the grossest cheeseburgers of my life (on a table with an ashtray) before turning in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had an overnight flight and arrived at my hotel for the weekend – the Alhambra. I chose it because it was inexpensive (these next 2 nights are on me) and centrally located (a short walk from the Kings Cross tube station). My flight got me in at 6:15AM and I got to the hotel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-me"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5TCqO-4a","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}