London, Day 2

If you read about our first day in London, you would probably think we would have just crashed on day two. But no, we kept on going! We didn't get to do everything we hoped to do on day two, though, because we ended up sleeping until noon (which we really needed)! We still got to do a lot though, and this day was our most beautiful afternoon in London. We were glad we spent it biking and exploring! 

We started out our day with a coffee and pastry from Old Spitalfields Market. Regretfully, I didn't take a picture, but it was the cutest market. It made us happy with our choice to stay on the East side of London, as the area near the market was hip, trendy, as well as historic. After breakfast, we set out to find bikes, and after a long journey looking, we finally found them close to our hotel.

We decided at this point we wouldn't have time to see St. Paul's on this day like we had planned because we wanted to go to another free "alternative London" tour that we signed up for at 3pm. So, we rode bikes across Tower Bridge and enjoyed exploring the city. 

and... Jamie got more pounds at the ATM! The conversion rate was extremely unfortunate... everything was SO expensive (although it used to be much worse so we had to be somewhat grateful). 

Then, we headed out on our "alternative London" tour, which ended up being cooler than we expected. It advertised a tour of "street art", which we expected to be graffiti, but we ended up seeing some really elaborate street art. Our favorite pieces are pictured below: 

After the tour, we relaxed on the sidewalk and enjoyed free wifi from a local cafe. 

And for dinner, we had reservations at Tayyabs, which we greatly enjoyed. It was delicious Indian food, and as a plus it was BYOB, so we brought wine that we bought earlier in the day at the grocery store. 

After dinner, we decided we wanted to try the local beer, so we went to the grocery store to buy the local "London Pride". It wasn't very good. We didn't have very much beer in London, but what we did have was terrible. We did make some new friends at our hotel that night, though - Fernando, a Spanish student studying in London, and Mari, a Croatian on her vacation, which was fun!