My trip to London

Day 1

It was Friday the 13th of August, and we left early in the morning to visit the capital city of England,
London. Since my mother-in-law, Sima, has never been to London, I was expecting it to become a
really touristy trip. I packed accordingly: camera, good walking shoes, blister plasters and of course
my bright yellow rain jacket. Our early departure prevented us from getting stuck in any traffic jams
so we still had most of our day left to do some sightseeing. After we arrived in Paddington, we
checked in to our hotel, and got ready to explore.

Because Sima has a pretty dodgy knee we decided upon something I never thought I would do. We
got ourselves tickets for the Hop on, Hop off bus. For years I had been mercilessly mocking touristy
tourists. I had seen them all, the Asian tourists, taking “peace selfies” with everything, the big tour
groups filled with chubby Americans, the hipster tourists, contemplating life in museums, and now,
I’d become one of them. Little did I know that I would actually enjoy it.

The bus drove past some beautiful spots like Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, St. Pancras and
many more. A nice audio tour was included which had the most delightful classical music in between
talks and we even got free ponchos, making my yellow rain jacket redundant. Normally we would’ve
taken the tube or driven around a bit ourselves, but the bus was actually very convenient. We got to
see a lot more of the city, including lots of nice places that are less popular.

Since I’m a hardcore Harry Potter fan, we got off at King’s Cross station and took some magical
pictures at platform 9¾. After some shopping in the nearby Harry Potter store the nerd in me was
satisfied and we moved on to the London Eye. Being afraid of heights rendered this experience
rather nerve-racking for me, however, after several panic attacks I dared to stand up when we
reached the maximum height and got to take some fake “happy” photos with a view to show off on
my Instagram!

After a successful first day and a mouth-watering Thai dinner we retreated to the hotel, entirely
unaware of the awful night that was awaiting us. The hotel rooms were small but sufficient,
considering we would be spending most of the day out. However, living in Wales, it hadn’t quite sunk
in yet that freedom day in England really meant, freedom day. The bars and clubs were fully open
again and our hotel neighbours took advantage of this by getting drunk like I used to when I was 17.
Even our expensive earplugs weren’t enough to drown out the cacophony of sounds coming from the
other rooms.

Four things for the proofreading stage.

1. Use of articles. One of something – the. Several, or specific name = no article.

2. Apostrophes. Use of ‘photo’s’ should lead to a prison sentence! Photos. PHOTOS!!!

Possessive: Nick’s pen. Yashar’s mother. My friend’s bad manners.

Contraction: Nick’s happy with his pen.

3. Be aware of tautology.
 4. Capital letters!!

Day 2

After a brutal night we resurrected ourselves with an enormous strong cup of coffee and we hopped
on the bus again. The luminous weather made us soon forget about our misery. We decided to get
off at Westminster pier, and make use of our free boat-tour to Tower Bridge included in our bus
ticket.

It seemed as if more people had the same idea as us and so we squeezed ourselves into the few
remaining spots on the deck. The boat had the most amazing unofficial tour guide and this, together
with the bar below deck, made up for all the unattended screaming children on the boat. After about
thirty minutes we approached the Tower Bridge and I got ready to leave the boat when