London

First, apologies that this took so long. Jumping back to school was a bit of a shock to the system, so I've been focusing on the work and less on the fun.

I flew to London for the first part of my 7th Week Vacation on the 8th. The Center gives all programs a week off every quarter, to allow us to travel a bit and explore Europe and France. The intention of that is to discourage us from skipping classes to travel. Which I guess makes sense, but it's been hard going back into academic mode.

Anyways, my flight to London was on Easyjet which is a budget airline in Europe. I only paid about 50 euro for the flight, which was great. The downer is that you get what you pay for. My flight was delayed about two hours, which was a bit of a disaster because the gate was in a location without any food or restrooms. At one point I went backwards through security to go back to the concourse to use the restroom and buy a snack. Once on the plane everything was fine. I landed at Luton airport at about 4 in the afternoon. I took the Easybus into London proper, which was an hour and twenty minutes. The bus was a bit freaky because they drive on the wrong side of the road. It was definitely unnerving. I arrived in London and headed straight out to my hostel for the night. I stayed at the Globetrotter's Inn, which was in Hammersmith, about a 45 minute tube ride from the city center in London. After so much traveling I was exhausted and fell asleep at about 9 PM.

My first full day in London was Remembrance Sunday, so there were lots of events throughout the city. I started out at the Tower of London on the East side of the city, and I spent the day walking along the Thames seeing all of the major sites. I saw the Tower, the Tower Bridge, Shakespeare's Globe Theater, St. Paul's, the London Eye, Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster. I then met up with my friend Meredyth, who I shared a suite with in Chicago the last two years. She is studying in London at University College for the year, so we spent a lot of time together. Meredyth and I walked to Buckingham Palace. The Queen was home, but we didn't see her. Meredyth then took me to a market where we sort of went shopping, and where we bought dinner. We had fresh oysters, which were delicious and fun to eat! I then had a plate of fresh paella from a Spanish vendor. It made me excited to go to Spain next month! After we headed up and hung out at her place in Camden Town, before I headed home on the tube for the night.

The second day was icky. It poured the whole day, which made it hard to go around and sightsee. I started out the day with big plans to go to Kensington Gardens to find the Peter Pan statue. I decided that the rain wasn't going to stop me, so I bought a coffee and walked in the rain through Kensington Gardens, which were beautiful. I found the Peter Pan statue, and loved it. Peter Pan is one of my favorite kids stories, so it was fun to go see the statue. Afterwards I went to the National Gallery, which is right on Trafalgar Square. The Square was a bit sad because of the rain, but the Gallery was fun. Inside is the National Art Collection, which includes some very beautiful work by Rembrandt. They also have so great Van Gogh stuff, including one of his sunflower canvases. I then tried to find the British Museum on foot, in the rain. It was a bit of a disaster, and a lot further than I thought it was going to be. I really have no perception of distance when I look at a map. I finally found it, and I was soaking wet. So, I took a detour and went in dried off in a Starbucks with a nice coffee. The British Museum was really fun. It has a lot of artificats from ancient civilizations all over the world. It also hosts the Rosetta Stone, which was pretty cool to see in person. The museum also has lots of Ancient Egyptian stuff, including mummies!

My third day was my last full day in London. It was much nicer than the first two days, so I did a lot of backtracking. I started out at Picadilly Circus, which is London's (weak) attempt at a Time's Square. I then walked to Buckingham Palace, for the changing of the guard at noon. It was pretty cool, a marching band came through, and the guard did a lot of stuff that was hard to see because there were so many people there. I then took myself to Notting Hill, for the Portabello Road Market. It was really fun to walk abound the neighborhood. I ended up back in Kensington Gardens, which was much nicer in the sunshine. I walked through the gardens, and found Harrod's, one of the largest department stores in the world. It was amazing. They've gave me a map when I got into the store, and I spent two and a half hours wandering around looking at all sorts of stuff. I accidentally spent some money too... oh well. Meredyth took me for fish and chips for dinner. It was good to have that classic British experience.

The next day I headed to Gatwick Airport to fly to Dublin, Ireland, the second half of my vacation!


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