London!

So, this past weekend, myself, Cati, Jonathan and Forrest took an adventure into London. We decided to take the overnight bus (just like Harry Potter) that left Friday night and got into London around 7 am Saturday morning. I think the best part was when we boarded the bus, the driver asked only us if we had any alcohol because it wasn’t allowed on, to which Forrest responded, “Not Yet!” That overnight bus was definitely not as fun as the one Harry was on. It was rather miserable actually haha. Nonetheless, it was worth it! Once we arrived, we decided to attempt to find our hostel. The public transportation system is extremely handy in London, as you can get just about anywhere by hopping onto a bus. A creepy old man who randomly started talking to me actually sent us in the right direction…who knew? Well our hostel ended up being really nice, so that was a relief. The weather was really nice during the day on Saturday…it was sunny and warm, which has been quite rare here I’ve come to realize. That being sad, we decided to start our London excursion by starting out in Hyde Park. I think Forrest had the ultimate tourist outfit….grey sweatpants, a maroon Goofy sweatshirt, and a backpack. Classic. So, we walked through the park, saw the Princess Diana Fountain Memorial, the Peter Pan statue, and ended up on the other side of the park near Kensington Palace. We walked around the gardens there, which were absolutely beautiful. Being the cheap college students we are, we decided to save our money and not go into Kensington Palace but instead take jumping pictures by this “Physical Energy” statue…

After this, we went to see the Albert Monument and then walked on down towards Buckingham Palace. The park outside Buckingham palace is really nice place, as well as the gardens just outside of the palace. Of course there were the palace guards standing outside, doing possibly the most boring job in the world in my opinion. Then there was a policeman with a huge gun. Apparently the guards in the red coats and tall black hats aren’t very intimidating…

We then proceeded to go eat lunch…in the food court of the train station. We don’t’ need to experience expensive cultural London food….cheap Subway and McDonalds are cultural enough for us! After lunch we decided to go see how much tickets to ‘Wicked’ would be and if they had any left for the show later that night. Well…we ended up getting 6o pound tickets for 25..so I’d say that was a steal! We then decided to spend some of the afternoon looking for Abbey Road. Might I add that I had pretty much navigated us around town using a map and a handy bus map…considering my history and following maps and directions, I was doing a pretty decent job! Well…we waited at this so called bus stop that would take us to abbey road for an hour….the bus was supposed to come every 7-10 minutes. Lies. All lies. We gave up and decided to head to King’s Cross Station to see the one and only Platform 9 ¾ ! (Or, according to Forrest...Pier 3 ½). I naturally ran in there quite quickly with my Gryffindor scarf ready for the picture, and we couldn’t find it! I definitely did NOT want to be that American tourist that asked for directions to Platform 9 ¾….so we just kept looking and finally saw a group of people snapping pictures at something…and finally found it…

After we left, the usual rain shower began, harder than usual, so that was not so fun. Thank goodness we were just heading to dinner and then to go see ‘Wicked’. We ate at a pizza buffet…again in the train station food court, and it was amazing! I can’t remember the last time I had pizza…let alone a buffet…ahh how I miss America sometimes lol. After dinner we went to ‘Wicked’. It was absolutely amazing! The best musical I’ve ever seen by far. We had great seats and the music, sets, costumes, dancing, lighting, and everything was just unbelievable! Even the guys loved it…and so did Cati…who hates musicals. So it was definitely worth the money and probably the highlight of the trip for me.

This next bit is oh so entertaining…our attempt to return to our hostel for the evening. Well, you’d assume that we’d just go the exact same way we did that morning, right? No, I thought I’d be smart and attempt to get us there quicker. BAD IDEA. I got us on the wrong bus….but we didn’t realize it until the bus began to slow down and the loud speaker called “This bus terminates here”…hmmm we don’t know where ‘here’ is. So, we get off the bus…it’s raining…it’s dark…we have no idea where we are in relation to our hostel…and we’re kind of in the ghetto of London. Yep, I slightly began to freak out. After wandering around in the rain talking to people who didn’t speak English about taxis, we finally found a cab company who got us back to our hostel…that was actually only a few minutes away. Hey, at least we made it. That’s what matters.

Our stay in the hostel was quite nice…for the four of us we got a room of four with bunk beds…like camp! Haha. Breakfast in the morning was decent as well. Unfortunately, when we woke up, we realized it was raining…and the weather online said rain was in the forecast all day until about 7 pm. Great. The day we saved for sightseeing for the big stuff, it decides to rain. So after some wandering around on buses for a good hour or so and getting sort of lost..we decided to head to Harrod’s…the department store that sells a hair clip for 500 pound. This is naturally my kind of store! Haha. We first went into Burberry down the street, and we got some death glares walking in. We obviously did not look worthy enough to be setting foot inside their store. They even gave us plastic bags to put our umbrellas in so they didn’t ‘drip on the floor’. After that fun little excursion we made it into Harrods and looked around for a while. I’m pretty sure the candy store was our favorite. It literally looked like the candy store in your mind when you think of what you’d like a candy store to look like as a child. Following this, we found some lunch and afterwards decided to just suck it up and go out and ‘soak in’ all the sight seeing we could (Pun completely intended). Just as we go to our first destination, the tower of London, the rain started to subside and stayed that way for the rest of the day! Perfect timing. We walked along the tower bridge (They totally named the wrong “London Bridge”..because it’s pretty lame… the ‘Tower Bridge’ should definitely be the official London Bridge). Then we went towards the London Eye and walked along the river to see Big Ben and the Parliament Building. We saw Westminster Abbey and where Gordon Brown lives (though as I type this, the UK is voting on whether or not they will let him live there a bit longer…). Then we got on the bus to head back to our hostel to get our stuff to head home….the boys then noticed a huge sports store, so naturally we had to get off and look around. I must admit, it was a pretty awesome store, 6 floors I believe. Once we got back on the bus we went to the hostel to grab our stuff, and then set out to try and accomplish one more thing…finding Abbey Road! We wandered around a bit and tried to ask for directions and didn’t really get a very good response but eventually found Abbey Road. Obviously the picture in the Beatle’s Album cover is in one particular spot…and Abbey Road is a road that extends for more than a block…so we had no idea which way to go. Thankfully someone could blatantly tell that we were completely lost and stopped to asked if we needed help finding anything. The guy ended up being from California studying music in London and pointed us in the right direction. Thank goodness for him otherwise we never would’ve found it! So the last thing we did before we left London was get the best picture of the trip…

We then quickly got a bus back into town and ran and took some night pictures of London. It was incredible; London lit up at night is definitely a sight to see. It was sort of surreal taking pictures on a bridge overlooking the city of London at night. I feel so luck to be experiencing all of these things! I have definitely had such a blast here and am sad that I have to leave it all behind in just one month! But I definitely miss everyone back home so I am excited for that.

So the bus trip back from London was even worse than the way there but again, definitely worth it! I think the best part about Sunday was that we were so tired already that everything was absolutely hilarious and so even if it did rain all day, it wouldn’t have bothered us. This was definitely one of the most fun weekends I’ve had here and I wish we would’ve had more time. London is definitely on the top of my list of places to return to someday!

On an entirely different note, I was at a BBQ the other day and there were donuts on the table, so I asked for one, and the guy said "Well aren't you the stereotype!" GREAT.