London, England

Naturally, I'm not in London right now, but I just wanted to document the title of this entry to its purpose a little better.

London began with an awesome EasyJet flight at 7:00 in the morning. Now I love to fly... not. The flight was not my favorite. EasyJet isn't necessarily the smoothest flying, but it is fairly on time and cheap. And luckily all my flights with them are under 2 hours long. Thank God.

I'm glad Mike and I didn't have a very tight schedule with where we needed to go and all because it took us a while to go through their customs because they're not in the European Union. It also took us a little while to figure out where the train was. The Gatwick Express was pretty sweet though.. super fast.. well at least on the way there.

We found our hotel which was in a more historical part of London with the help of a map from a convince store and some old guy smoking outside a cafe. It wasn't very far from the Earl's Court station of the underground. We put our baggage in the baggage room at the hotel and basically wandered. It was kind of awesome to have no real idea of where you were headed to or what you were planning on seeing.. and no schedule. We walked to the Thames River and crossed a bridge. We ended up finding some sweet modern buildings, as well as Norman Foster's office building completely unaware. That was pretty cool. We did a whole lot more walking and ate lunch at Young's, with a very traditional English meal of a meat pie with mashed potatoes, peas and a ton of gravy.

In the afternoon we found Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park. And I fell asleep in the ICA, which only happens to be about 3 rooms. Mike woke me and we decided that since we were up at 4:30 it was time to check into the hotel and take a little nap. Needless to say, a little nap turned into a long one. Finding dinner, turned into meeting some guy on the street who gave us directions and tips, which turned into us ending up a local pub. We didn't stay too long, but I have to say that so far I was pretty fond of the British. We wandered into the evening, only to stumble upon Big Ben, Parliment, the Eye, and Westminster Abbey, again without the map.

Friday we decided to head back over to the famous area to take some day pictures and maybe go in the church. Well it turns out Westminster Abbey is about 12 pounds to go in for one person. I didn't need to go in that bad. We headed over to the financial area to see the Norman Foster building - the Gherkin and the Lloyd's of London building. I had to do a little architecture homework while I was there.

We ate sushi for lunch in a restaurant that was super cool.. I wish I took pictures. The set up was like a bar, but a conveyer belt went around the bar with plates of sushi and you just grabbed what you want. You pay per plate at the end. It was a really cool place. It was also in the middle of Liverpool station, which was really a neat place. My camera decided it didn't want to take pictures at that moment, but Mike definitely got some.

After lunch we eventually made it over to Tower Bridge and paid the fee to go see the exhibit. The exhibit brought you up to the two walkways above where they set up information and pictures and naturally there’s an awesome view. After we made our way through everything we got to see the engine room, which still contains the steam engine that was once used to lift the bridge before. Today, it’s naturally a different system that was away from the public’s hands. And naturally, Mike was more interested than me.

The late afternoon we spent in the Tate Modern, probably one of my favorite parts of London. Very cool museum as well as an architectural piece. I think we spent close to 4 hours there. We followed that up with dinner at another English pub type restaurant. Then I fell asleep fully dressed, contacts in, TV on. This was typical of this vacation.

Saturday Mike and I got tickets for the Eye. I thought I’d be a lot more uncomfortable than I was. It was really smooth and nice. It was great to see the city from above. Oh but before that I was in a street performance act where I chained up some dude. Ask Mike about it, he thought it was funnier than I did. Maybe my family remembers that time in Disney where the Chinese guy made the wax figurine on my head and then I cried? Well I was just that uncomfortable except I was a much better sport and I didn’t cry.

Also, we saw the changing of the guards that morning. Not as exciting as I thought it would be. I honestly can't believe that much enforcement is used so often for such a silly ritual. That's a whole lot of people and money used

We went back to the Tate in the afternoon, after crossing the Millennium Bridge. We just went back to do a little shopping, but we were glad that’s all we were going back for as there were so many people. They had an area that talked about the new addition they are putting on the Tate and at first I asked why because they Tate is HUGE, but Saturday confirmed it for me. There are way too many people for that space to be enjoyable. I would love to come back when the addition is there.

We met up with Jill, Steve, and George in the evening. We got a good Italian meal and then went home because people weren’t feeling all that good. It’s seems like a mildly reoccurring trend on these trips.

Sunday morning, Mike left for Boston. It was a hard morning. I didn’t stay at the hotel long. I checked out and headed to Camdentown Markets. I didn’t know what to really expect, all I knew was that it was on my list that Erik gave me of recommendations. I don’t even know what the comparable would be back home to these markets. It was like a complete street full of shops and areas that were set up like flea markets or craft shows. There is jewelry, clothing, food, anything really. Everything spills out onto the wide sidewalks. And there are people everywhere. Needless to say I definitely did some shopping. I also got excited when I got 6 mini spring rolls for a pound. They were delicious.

Jill met up with me at the markets and we had a fairly relaxing afternoon of wandering around and sitting around. We made our way to Victoria Station to meet George and Steve. We got on the Gatwick Express again; of course this time it took 45 minutes. Needless to say we were worried about making the plane. But everything went fine and the flight was fairly smooth for EasyJet. We got home late because there was traffic at Gatwick when we left. We didn’t get home until around midnight and I was exhausted.

All in all, it was a great weekend and I wouldn’t have changed a thing, besides me being nervous about making the plane on the way home. It was hard to come back to reality yesterday. School is hard for me to get back into. Especially since this was like my first real vacation since I’ve been here. I didn’t feel rushed which was probably the greatest gift I could have had. It seems like everywhere I go I’m stressed about time and seeing everything, but this wasn’t like that at all. I loved London and I definitely wish I could have had more time there, especially with Michael.