London! Cheerio!

A long overdue recap of my london adventure...

'bout that time eh chap?...righto.

So we flew Monarch to London which is a british airline so all of their announcements were in a british accent and I giggled happily the entire flight. Especially when we deplaned and the flight attendant literally said "cheerio!"

We had to take the train into the city from the airport anyway so our absolute first stop in London was King's Cross station where Harry Potter's wizarding life began. Now I understand why in the end of the last book when Harry is inbetween life and death and Dumbledore asks, "where do you think we are?" Harry answers, "It looks like King's Cross... only cleaner..."The station was all construction and debris but thats the way it goes right? Magic can only be found in the most inconspicuous places by those who have enough sense to look for it there. Anyways, like Harry, we couldn't find the platform 9 and 3/4 either and so (favorite part of the trip) I got to actually ask a construction worker, "where is platform 9 and 3/4?" His hard facial expression broke into a reluctant smile at the look of pure glee on my face and he led us there while i skipped along behind him.

By the time our kings cross adventure was over and we had made it to the hostel to check in and put our stuff down and taken the tube to the river it was dark out. We were all trying to hide our disappointment at having missed an entire day of sunlight in London stuck in the line at customs and on various forms of public transportation.. until we saw how beautiful the city looked at night. We walked along the river across the London bridge, the Tower bridge, the Millenium bridge and past Shakespeare's globe theatre and St. Paul's Cathedral

By the way, I dont know if you guys have ever wondered if since people in the UK drive on the left side of the road if they walk on the other side of the sidewalk as well. Well, I learned the answer to this question when an unyielding business woman ran right into me as i clung to the right side wall in the subway station and proceeded to topple right over the suitcase she was wheeling behind her. Welcome to London, they walk on the left side too. After living in spain for a month we experienced another culture shock while walking around the city... As we sauntered across the bridge people were positively tearing past us. At one point we wanted to ask someone to take a picture of all of us and I must have asked at least 5 different people as they ran by. Some just said "sorry" and kept walking, some said "in a rush", some straight up said "no" and some only glanced at us. We were actually so shocked by their rush that we literally looked at each other scared and thought that the city was under attack by some evil forces. Honestly. We went to the train station and asked the information desk why everyone was in such a rush and he looked at us like the stupid americans we are and replied that they were headed home from work..

The next day was one of the most jam-packed days i have ever experienced. We did more in this one day than some people do in a week. We woke up early had tea and crumpets for breakfast and then headed out and proceeded to walk an hour in the wrong direction before we finally gave in and bought a tube pass for the day. We went to hyde park and walked along serpentine lake, saw buckingham palace and the changing of the guards, walked through (i think) St. Michaels park, saw Big Ben and Westminster Palace...

...Continued on to Trafalgar square where we stopped for lunch and then on to the Tower of London. The tower of london was amazing, we didnt go in because it was near closing time and the admission fee was a little high but we walked all around the castle and the museum which told us about all the crown jewels that are stored inside, along with armour from old kings, and even a small blurb about how this was the place that many "traitors" to the king were executed, including Ann Boleyn! We then walked by the Charles Dickens restaurant and hotel which was so charming, absolutely recommended, and my possible wedding location. After that, (yes this day is still going) we went to Harrods which is almost unexplainable. A department store on steriods. They sell pianos, 22000 dollar shirts, puppies, carousels, and everything inbetween. On the bottom floor they have a food market and a chocolate section where I had the best chocolate of my life to date. The whole time I was inside this "store" I felt like I had walked into some sort of mixture between Alice's Wonderland and Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

When we left Harrod's it had begun to snow and looked beautiful outside with all the lights! We got fish and chips for the second night in a row (delish) if you have never had them it is not just fish sticks its literally an entire fish that has been fried and plopped on your plate for your devouring pleasure. After that we settled into a cozy english pub with a cup of baileys and hot chocolate while the snow continued to come down. We had decided to stay up until 3 when we would have to leave for the airport for our 6am flight and as if that wasnt bad enough... our taxi never showed up at 3am while we waited in the accumulating snow.. As my phone was out of minutes, Hilary's had turned off and she didnt know the code to turn it back on, and Alyssa's had died (of course).. we had to run back to the hostel looking absolutely ridiculous as our movement was significantly hindered by our 7 layers of clothing and our giant backpacks. We used the wifi and the hostel's phone to call every cab company's number on google only to receive no answer or the reply that they had closed because of the snow. We were now in great danger of missing our flight that was apparently still on time according to the airline and so in a last ditch effort i navigated to the second page of google (nobody checks google's second page of results) and we tried one last number. The cab company picked up and told us that they would be right there. We cut a line of about 200 people to check in and ran through security (movement still limited by gross amounts of clothing and luggage) and made our flight by about 4 minutes. Our flight then sat on the runway for approximately 2 hours and we returned to our apartment at 2pm the next day where I fell asleep til 10pm


you can look at all my london pictures by copying this link into your browser:

https://picasaweb.google.com/105431112873705184992/London?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCKHLwYmGwdiD8QE&feat=directlink

and please do! because it takes me about 2 hours to upload those things with this spanish internet we got going over here