London: The Pound is Painful!

I am not trying to be some sort of lame American whining that "London is so expensive!" but...good gawd, it is 'spensive here!!! Like last year, most everything costs exactly the same in Pounds as it would in dollars...only a Pound is only worth 50 cents on the dollar. So, for example, dinner tonight was comprised of two ciders (pints) at 3 each, a side of fries for Jill at 3.5, fish & chips at 10.5, and a roast beef baguette at 9...so basically, $60 for a simple pub dinner. We've had the same experience grabbing two sandwiches to go and water, spending around $20 for tuna salad and water. Again, you know this when you sign up to come here - but it makes it hard to justify buying a single thing!

Anyhow, the good news is that all museums are free here! And so is walking around...which was a lot of what happened today - it's Jill's first time here, so we opened the day with a walk to Buckingham Palace, through St. James Park, and then on to Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, past 10 Downing Street and all the big'ole Marble buildings to Trafalger Square. We paused here, but it was so gorgeous out we opted not to go inside to the National Gallery and reserved it for another day. We instead carried on and walked about in Leicester Square, SoHo, Chinatown and the Theatre District before heading home. It was a long, big walking day! Dinner was the aforementioned pricey-but-really-quality pub dinner near our hotel, followed up by a short walk before having some chill time back at our room.














Various shots of London!