London Twenty Ten! (Part 1)

Wednesday January 27th-Friday January 29th....

This past weekend was lengthier for Spain. Thursday January 28th was St. Thomas's Day so our school week ended on Wednesday. Everyone was making plans to go somewhere fun. A lot of the CIDE students were booking trips to Barcelona, but I want to go there when it is warmer. My friends and I did some research and found a flight to London for Wednesday night. London was definitely on the top of my places to go so I was really excited. Unfortunately, it was all a bit last minute so the hostel booking was a ad more expensive than we would have liked, but I was please nonetheless. I also decided it would be a good idea for all of us to book a bus tour so that we could see more of the city. We found an awesome company that gave us tickets for two days, including a free river cruise, and hop-on/hop-off services. Wednesday rolled around and my infamous line began, "Hey guys guess what? We're going to London!"

(London Eye and the Aquarium)

Traveling was a it more complicated than planned. We had to take a bus out of Bilbao to get to a city over called Santander and when we arrived at that bus stop we had to take another bus to get to the actual airport in Santander. We made it in the nick of time to the world's smallest airport. (Not literally, but the place had five gates and one place to eat.) We were all nervous about over carry-on baggage being too big or too heavy and it turns out they never even weighed it! Ashley's bag almost got stuck in the measurement compartment, but everything worked out in the end. I forgot to mention I had woken up that morning feeling less than spectacular. I ended up getting sick during my morning classes and let's just just RyanAir didn't make me feel much better. Well we finally landed in the Stansted Airport of London. More more planning on our part because we didn't realize how complicated it would be just to get into the city of London. We ended up taking another hour long bus and when we got dropped off had absolutely no idea where we were. We wandered the streets for a bit until a few nice passerbyers helped us out and we eventually found our hostel. Everyone in London was turning out to be so nice!

(Big Bus tour)

The hostel was tinyyyy, with three sets of bunkbeds lining a 10x10 room. But what else could I expect? We booked a six bed mixed room... but with five of us we never got another roommate. We all passed out when we got into our "beds" (if you actually want to call them that). The next day we slept in a bit and didn't get going until 11:00. Which was fine because we hopped on our Big Bus tour and that began our day! The bus idea was perfect because it took us all over the city with a running commentary of all the sites we were seeing. The plan was to ride the bus the whole way through and maybe get off at the end or go back and see things we wanted to go back and get better pictures of or something. 

(Sprawled out on the floor of our hostel...not very big)

But after riding through Trafalgar Square and arriving at the London Eye and Big Ben we decided to get off and go back to see some things. Big Ben was not as big as I expected, but cool to see regardless. And we headed back to go see the Parliament and Westminister Abbey. We couldn't get in the Abbey, but went into a smaller church that was just as pretty. We headed back to Trafalgar Square where Kate and I wanted a picture with these huge bronze lions... We had a very interesting time getting up there... And then we headed over to the Calvary museum to get these pictures with guards on horses where on of the horses almost bit my head off! Next, we decided to head over to Buckingham Palace. My one goal of this trip was to get a picture with one of those guards with the fuzzy hats. When we got to the Palace though, the guards were behind fences and I couldn't get near them! Very disappointing. We headed to a little restaurant for lunch after, with REAL food. Pasta and turkey paninis. I was overjoyed. 

Then we wanted to go head through St. Jame's Park, but did not realize kamikaze pigeons resided there and we needed to book it out asap for Kelly's sake. We decided to get back on the bus and take advantage of our free river cruise, so we made it down to the end of the city where the Tower of London and London Bridge are located and hopped onto the boat, nothing too extravagant, but it was nice that it was free! We ended up at the London Eye right around dusk. Which is a giant ferris wheel located right on the river across the street from Big Ben that was only supposed to be a temporary construction for two years and has been there for the last ten! We had to try it out. After our intro 4-D show, the five of us loaded into a giant glass bubble that you could walk around of sit in and get a 360° view of the city. So glad we decided to do it at night! After that the Big Bus had stopped running so we made it over by foot to the Hard Rock Cafe for a nice big American hamburger! Who knew London was the original restaurant??

(View from the London Eye!)

(At the Hard Rock)

I know that London is known for it's rain, but we actually lucked out with weather for most of the day. I even had my sunglasses on at one point! But of course when it was time to walk back to the hostel that night it was pouring, so we figured out how to get a bus back. Another long day resulted in an early turn in. We had one more day of Big Bus, but we knew rain was in the forecast, so we were planning to see a lot of the museums. Our hostel was located right near Hyde Park which contain an infamous Peter Pan statue and the Princess Diana Memorial fountain, both of which we wanted to see. So we made it through the park and after seeing everything we came out the other side to the Natural History Museum. History museums are my favorite kind of museum, there were dinosaur and mammal displays and lots of information on the earth and natural disasters like volcanic eruptions. All very interesting... We were also near Harrod's department store which was a definite must see for me. It is London's largest department store where you can find anything from Krispy Kreme's to designer dresses and shoes. I can only wish to be able to shop in a store like that one day... 

We waited for the Big Bus for a while and realized our day was running short since the bus stopped running at 4:30... Kate, Ashley and I got to see the National Gallery while Nina and Kelly shopped instead. The Gallery was amazing.... Got to see works by Van Gogh and Monet and even experienced a walk through and film viewing of an interesting display called "Hoerengracht." Which was a life size mode of Amsterdam's red-light district in the 1980's. Like I said it was very... interesting. Afterward we went to go to one of my most anticipated locations in London, the Absolut Icebar! The bar is made entirely out of ice and groups can only go in for forty minute increments. You get a parka and gloves when you go i, plus one free drink in a glass made out of ice! Next time you go to London anybody, definitely try this place out! 

After the Icebar we made plans for dinner with my friend Elizabeth from back home. She is studying in London for a few months and I thought it would be fun to meet up and have dinner with her. She took us to this local restaurant for some real British food and I actually had Shepard's Pie! Wouldn't have been my first choice on every menu, but it was really good. We had some hard cider at a pub nearby (where they play live rugby Jay!) and called it a night. I was loving that we were getting to see so much in such a short amount of time, but all this constant activity was wearing me out! (Picture of Ashley and I at the IceBar above.)

(Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery at night.. Full moon!)

Saturday and Sunday will be in the post to come!