On a recent quick jaunt to Jolly Ole London (side trip from Paris), we did all of the normal research of places we had to see. I’ve heard great things about London and certainly not having a language barrier was going to be a plus. But I did not expect to leave London with a sour taste in my mouth – or really a lack of much taste of London at all!
We arrived by Train via the Chunnel from Paris with a little more than 24 hours to paint the town. We easily found our hotel, deposited our luggage and jetted off for our first of several must see locations starting off with a trip on the London Eye. 
Great way to acclimate yourself to the sites with a birds eye view. After our trip in the wheel, we searched for a traditional English meal of Fish & Chips. Luckily we found a pub near Westminster Abbey and it was a delightful experience. Unfortunately this would end up being our ONLY English food experience….and this is where the fail comes in. Our timing was always off for anymore English food.
Fast forward to that evening. We’ve just finished a double decker tour of London and we fancy some dinner. We walk in the general direction of our hotel and end up by Buckingham Palace. Great – we can cross it off our list now. By this time it’s 9pm (21:00) and every single pub has stopped serving dinner. It’s like a law or something. Seriously. NO food after 9pm. With four starving women with tired feet, we ended the night eating burgers from an American joint called The Shake Shack. Good but not what we came to London to eat.
Well we have another day and another attempt to eat more traditional English food. My English husband’s family had taught us all about Bangers and Mash and Shepards Pie so we started our hunt for the real deal. Certainly it being lunch time, we could find that right? Nope. Every pub didn’t serve food until noon. So we waited. And they said, their ovens would take about an hour to heat up so they couldn’t offer us any of the foods we wanted. We ended up with a dry sandwich instead. We unfortunately couldn’t wait because we had to catch the Eurostar back to Paris to finish our vacation.
So when you plan your trip to London, be more patient than we were and plan out actual meals. Don’t wing it like we did. Now don’t get me wrong, the must see sites we saw were wonderful and highly recommend them for all first time visitors. But perhaps don’t try to jam it all in one 24 hour period. I’m sure I’ll go back but I have a lot more places on my list to travel to before heading back for another try at London.
