in a 3 day span since I have been in Europe.
Every time we were on the London tube, before every stop we would hear, in a harsh British accent,
There were even shirts you could buy that say "MIND THE GAP". I'm getting ahead of myself.
So I will make these blog posts shorter instead of telling you every single detail of my life. So we got to London on Sunday night and had to make our way to the hostel. LUCKILY IT WASN'T HARD BECAUSE EVERYONE SPOKE ENGLISH!!!!! It was definitely a nice refresher from Paris where I spoke 0 French. We hopped on "the tube" and made our way to our hostel, and in the train station.. I spotted first thing... DIET COKE! Everywhere in Europe is coke light so diet coke was a refresher. Holla. We made it to our hostel, called the "White Ferry Inn", above a bar in the neighborhood of Victoria. It was a cute hostel with a bunch of amenities, so we liked it. We stayed in a 21 person dorm.. which was fun, especially with the fact that it was mostly guys and all of them snored and smelled. How nice. But it actually was totally fine. We went to bed early because we were exhausted so we could spend the next couple days seeing everything we wanted to!
We slept in a little bit and finally got up and got ready, and decided we wanted to go see a musical in London. We went over to Oxford and Reagent Streets, the center of shopping in London, to check out the area and take out money, and spotted the apple store there, so we went in to use their internet. We picked a musical we wanted to see.. ironically, Chicago, and decided to go over to find out how much tickets were for day of shows. First, however, we stopped at "Pret", a cheap place to eat, suggested to us by a friend. I'm sorry, but they need one of these somewhere in Chicago. So cheap, and the food is fresh and delicious! They had a bunch of stuff to go, so we took it and went to eat in a nearby park.
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| The park we ate in for lunch |
So afterward, we hopped on the tube and went over to this area known as Covent Garden, where the theater was where Chicago was playing. This tube stop had either lifts to take to the top, or 193 stairs. Audrey and Karrah didn't see the sign that said 193 stairs, so they started walking up, and I was like .. "umm guys you know this is 193 stairs right?" and they were like "oh.. no". But we kept walking anyway. We went to the theater and kind of forgot it was Valentine's Day, so we had to go back the next day for half price tickets. So, since we were in a really nice shopping area, we decided to do some shopping around and exploring for the day, and we would go sight seeing the next two days. We shopped around and bought some things, and hopped on the tube to go over to the famous bakery called Hummingbird Bakery. Again, we forgot it was Valentine's Day, so the line was crazy, but we managed to get a table outside and grabbed some cake and I got COLD FRESH SKIM MILK (because they had it in LONDON). It was fabulous.
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| Vanilla cake with frosting and my freezing cold skim milk |
After, we went back to our hostel to get ready, because we were going to meet up with Danielle, Lauren, and Caroline, three girls I hang out with a lot from my program, who were also in London. We went on the "Pub Crawl" which turned out to be a complete joke and the guide was weird and creepy and 28 and asked Karrah if she did drugs.. Not really okay. So we went home for the night and went to bed.
The next morning we woke up and went to go see the changing of the guard! In the winter it is every other day, so we caught it on a day it was happening. It was a decently long ceremony, with a marching band and stuff, and the changing of the guard actually takes place right in front of the palace outside of the gates. We basically hung on the gates to see everything happening, but it was so cool to see! I was surprised because I thought the guards would be wearing red but instead they had on grey. Sometimes, the marching band is different because they invite bands from all over the world to play. Apparently, one time, there was a band that played the Darth Vader song while the Queen was pulling up to the palace. Not really okay! haha. There were also some horse drawn carriages roaming around the area that looked like they were driving important people, so I was interested to see who was inside!!
After changing of the guard, we grabbed some lunch and ate it at our hostel, then went over to Westminster Abbey to take a tour, because it's beautiful and I hope I get married there someday. But, we couldn't go in without taking some of the famous photos in the red telephone booths, and pictures of Big Ben and Parliament first!
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| Hello |
Anyway, we went inside Westminster Abbey and did the audio tour, which was sooooooo cool. It is has a really cool history. Tons of famous people are buried there, that is where all of the coronation ceremonies are held, as well as most royal weddings and funerals. Thus, Kate Middleton, who once was just a common person, who happened to meet a prince, will now get married in Westminster Abbey. Sigh. It was beautiful and I am just so fascinated by all of the royalty stuff that it was really cool to see and learn about it's part in the British Monarchy. After we took the tour, we decided to stay for the 5:00 mass they had, which was a REALLY cool thing to do. If you ever go to London, definitely do it because it has beautiful singing and we got to sit right up with the choir. It was really really cool. After, we went back to our hostel and got ready, and went over to Covent Garden again to go see the musical, Chicago! I had never seen Chicago, the musical, nor the movie, but I thought it was fabulous! They had really good actors and the singing was phenomenal. It was a great story, and I loved it! We went home and went to bed so we could get up and go explore more on Wednesday!
We woke up the next morning for a day completely devoted to site seeing. We hopped on the tube and went over to the Tower of London, a famous medieval castle/building/city, where prisoners were kept before being beheaded on Tower Hill, or inside the tower of London. It was also a castle for royals for some time. We went on a free tour, guided by the Yeeman Warders, who are people who dress up and live with their families AT the Tower of London. Kind of strange, because it is really creepy and people were killed there, but it's also really cool. Every night, there is a curfew of midnight, so no one can leave or enter the Tower of London after midnight.
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| Tower of London! |
Queen Anne Boleyn was beheaded there, inside the Tower of London, while many of the other traitors were taken up on the nearby Tower Hill, executed publicly, and their head was carried around for all of the town to see. As the Yeeman Warder told us, when the traitors were being brought up to be executed, they had to pay their executer so they could have a "clean" death, basically. Most of the stories that we were told were of people being beheaded, which was not so nice but whatever. We made it to the chapel inside of the Tower of London, where we were finally told a happy story of a woman sneaking her husband, who was to be executed the next day, out of the Tower of London! She went to visit her husband often, and usually brought ladies in waiting. On the eve of her husband's execution, she went with a bunch of ladies in waiting to his cell, and brought extra clothes. He dressed up as a woman, and was able to sneak out, and the woman faked her husband's voice pretending he was there. She told the guard not to disturb him as he was praying and going to bed, and he was able to escape and they lived happily ever after. What a nice story! When the tour was over, we went to the place in the Tower of London where the crown jewels are held. It was SO cool to see because there were crowns and diamonds and plates and tons of stuff from so long ago. I am so fascinated by the royal family. There was also a video of Queen Elizabeth getting coroneted, which was soooo cool to see!
After, we went over to the meeting point for our free walking tour of London! Our tour guide was the one on the brochure, so we were pumped. The free tours are great because you basically just tip between 5 and 10 euro at the end, and you get to see all of the main sights of the city and tons of different stuff. We saw EVERYTHING including Wellington Arch, Hyde Park, Green's Park, St. James's Park, Trofalger Square, Buckingham Palace, a bunch of free museums, where Prince Charles lives, Gentleman's club that apparently Hitler belonged to, Charlie Wilson war rooms, Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and more. We don't go inside them, but we basically get a history of the city and see tons of different stuff, so it was PERFECT! Surprisingly, a few people have been able to break into Buckingham Palace. The best story we were told was of a drunk homeless man who broke through a window, and when that happened, the guard looked at the alarm system going off and thought "there is no way someone is breaking in, it has to be malfunctioning", so he shut the alarm system off. The man wandered through the palace, dripping blood everywhere from his hand breaking the window, gorged himself on dog food, and made his way to the queen's room, where he got in bed with her. She stayed up talking to him and he seemed fine, but asked her for a cigarette, and she said, "let me call someone to have them bring you one." She did, and the guards were able to arrest him, and the rest is history. However, at the time it was not illegal to break into a royal building (including the royal palace), so he could only be charged with stealing dog food. Needless to say, now it is a crime to break into a royal building.
After the tour, we went back to our hostel to get ready to go meet up with our friend Abby. Abby was a senior when we were sophomores who was in our sorority, who studied abroad in London and ended up moving there for her master's degree and to work there! We went over to her apartment, which happened to be literally across the street from our hostel (truthfully, across the street). We chatted for a while, hopped on the tube and went over to Covent Garden for dinner. It was delicious and wonderful to catch up with friends, and its weird to think that soon enough we will all have friends all over the country/world. Strange! We went out for drinks after to a couple bars, including one called Bar Academy. At Bar Academy, you basically can order anything, and they have the MOST intricate, beautiful looking, decorative drinks. It was so cool! But strangely, when we were walking in, the bouncer pointed to me and said "You all are fine but I need to see YOUR ID." I think that was the first time in my life someone thought that I was the youngest person of the group, especially when I was the 2nd oldest.. funny times.
We went back to our hostel to go to bed for 4 hours before we had to hop on a bus out to London Stansted to take a flight out to Frankfurt! The end of my time in London with diet coke and skim milk, but I enjoyed it as long as I possibly could.
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