I have had an amazing 3 days in London with my cousin Kimmy.
I believe my last blog let off at me flying on Ryanair to London Stansted
airport. I arrived around 22:15 local time, but still had to go through customs
than get my bags before I could take the bus to the Liverpool Street Station
where I would be meeting up with Kimmy. I accidently got in the wrong line at customs
which was for other EU members (I just followed every one else that got off
from my plane), but the airport customs agent was very nice and told me where I
needed to go. So I went over filled out my little card of information about
where I was staying, what I was doing here, etc. then quickly moved on to get
my bags. Since the customs took a little longer, seeing as I was in the wrong
line, my bags were already on the round-a-bout so I quickly picked them up and
headed to find the kiosk where I could buy my bus ticket. I bought my bus
ticket and had approximately 10 minutes to find where the bus left from, so I
immediately asked for directions from staff and ran to the bus portal. The bus
ride was long, but we had free wifi so that made the trip go by much quicker.
It was so weird to be on the left side of the road! Leaving the airport we had
to go through a round-a-bout and we were going clockwise, it was so weird.
When I arrived at Liverpool St. Station Kimmy was right
there to pick me up, and I was super excited to see her and start my quick trip
in London. I crashed at her dorm that night, and the next morning we got ready,
got some Starbucks and we were on our way sight-seeing. First we saw the Tower
of London and the Tower Bridge. Both very cool. I was shocked to see how big
the Tower of London was! The palaces/castles that we have seen in Central
Europe were tiny compared to this. Also, it all looked so well preserved! I
decided not to pay to go inside, and save my money for shopping and food (more
my thing than history stuff haha). So we walked around, took some pictures,
headed over to the Globe and the “Wibbly Wobbly”bridge. We didn’t get to go
inside the Globe, but we did do some shopping there haha. Then we headed out to
see Big Ben, the London Eye, and Westminster Abbey. Big Ben was awesome, once
again looking like it was in pristine condition. We looked around, took some
pictures and Kimmy was giving me details on certain things that we saw, which
was very helpful.
After seeing those big things we took a walk through St.
James Park over to Buckingham Palace there was a lot of construction going on
with the roads right outside the palace, but it was still very cool. I loved
the elaborate gates, and of course the traditional Red Coat guards. We took
some pictures then headed out of the area walking through another park. We then
were able to do Picadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square (where we saw the USC
marching band putting on a performance), Neil’s Corner and we got to do some
shopping as well. That evening Kimmy and I went to a pub “Punch and Judy” where
Kimmy got a typical Sunday Roast, and I got some “Bangers and Mash” along with
some beer.
After our meal we went back to Kimmy’s dorm to relax a
little bit before going back out for an evening service at Westminster Abbey.
Now apparently, you’re typically supposed to pay a fee to go inside the Abbey,
but as an American I find it ridiculous that I would have to pay to go into a
church, so I thought “heck, why don’t we go to a service there?” It’s free, we
still get to walk around a little, and we get to say that we went to a service
at Westminster Abbey! I was super excited for this too since I haven’t really
gone to church the whole time I’ve been living abroad, due to the lack of
choices for English churches, so I was super excited to get back into a House
of God and worship in a language that I know haha. The sermon was really great,
with hymns, the Lord’s Prayer, and a really nice message about how we live in a
world where people are constantly questioning the existence of God (Why would
God let this happen?), and how we are always looking for physical proof of the
Lord, searching for relics and such, but in the end we as Christians are the
physical manifestation of God. The Holy Spirit lives within us and how we act
or react is (supposed to be) a physical representation of the Lord. It was a
very nice message. After the service, Kimmy and I slowly walked on out of the
church, trying to take in what we could (we even walked over Sir Isacc Newton’s
tomb while inside!) I shook the hand of the Reverend who gave the sermon, and
we were on our way back to King’s Cross. I headed to the hostel and quickly
went to sleep.
On day 2 of London, we first headed out of the city a little
bit to go see (from a distance) the Olympic Stadium that will hold the Summer
Games in July. It’s really hard to actually get to so we just saw it from a
distance and then headed back into town. We were then planning on going to
Abbey Road from there, since there’s a stop near the Olympic Stadium called
“Abbey Road”, but it apparently has nothing to do with the Abbey Road where the
Beatles went to record their music. Whoops. So instead, we went to Baker Street
next, to visit the famous residence of one of my favorite characters ever,
Sherlock Holmes. We took our pictures outside the 221B flat, then went inside
the gift shop quickly to get a few little souvenirs. THEN, we headed on over to
Abbey Road. Mind blowing stuff. It was so cool to walk across Abbey Road, just
like on the cover (yes, I had Kimmy take my picture while crossing Abbey Road).
We stood outside the tiny Abbey Road studio, read some of the writings on the
concrete wall outside of it. This was the place where a lot of the Beatles hits
were recorded! It was amazing.
Now Kimmy had been telling me about this store Primark,
which had great clothes and great deals, and she told me it was where she
bought her Oxfords (shoes) for like £ 6. She also told me how they have
some nice kind of “touristy” stuff, but it’s not very expensive, and it’s not
TOO touristy. So we got on a double decker bus and headed over to Primark.
Kimmy was trying to explain what this store was like to me, and I didn’t really
get what she was talking about until we got there. She was saying it was a mix
between like a Target and a Macy’s and she imagines it would be like what Black
Friday shopping is like, but every day. So needless to say, I was a little
intimidated. We got there, and I quickly realized what she meant when trying to
describe this store. They had some awesome clothes, and were all at pretty good
prices! I got a retro Disney shirt there that also had a Union Jack on it, so
that could be my “souvenir”, but it didn’t fit (Kimmy’s going to exchange it
for a larger one for me, yay!) Also, while getting in line I saw a large
collage tote bag with London phrases and pictures on it for only £ 1.50 so
I also made the impulse purchase of that as well.
When the mad rush shopping trip was over we headed over to
Harrod’s, which I must say was very impressive. Everything was extraordinarily
expensive, but very cool. We walked through the grocery store, candy/chocolate
store, as well as the baby, toys, pet, handbags, and perfume/cosmetics section
of the enormous store before heading to the Tea Room. Surprisingly, we were
able to get a pot of tea that averaged to about 3 cups each (the flavor was
Vanilla Excellence, and it was delicious), as well as filing amounts of
crumpets and tea cake for a fairly reasonable price. We felt so fancy! We had
our afternoon tea and crumpets at Harrod’s and were just trying to fit in with
the rest of the classy crowd.
Unfortunately our tea party had to end eventually and we again
headed back to Kimmy’s dorm to relax for a little while before heading back out
for dinner at the Breakfast Club, which is apparently Kimmy’s favorite place to
eat in London. Unfortunately they seemed to not have anything I wanted so I had
to “settle” for other choices, but it wasn’t bad. I wish they would have had
the pies and mash that I originally wanted, but such is life! After we ate at
the Breakfast Club with Kimmy’s friend Lisa, we headed over to Kimmy and her
crowds favorite pub, “Filthy Mac Nasty” (tehehe- I thought the name was funny).
We had some drinks, played some Jenga, and just chatted which was really nice
and enjoyable. Then we went our separate ways for the evening, me to my hostel,
Kimmy to her dorm.
The next morning, I got up got ready and met Kimmy outside her
dorm so we could head over to a bakery she likes to have some scones for
breakfast. We got our scones for take-away and headed over to Buckingham Palace
to see the Changing of the Guards. It was such a BEAUTIFUL day! It worked out
perfectly that that was the day we went to see the Changing of the Guard. When
we got the Palace, it was already pretty crowded, but we still were able to
fine places close enough to see everything and take pictures. While we waited
we ate our scones, took some pictures, etc. We also saw that the flag waving
above the palace was the flag that meant that the Queen was home. I thought
that was really cool, and was hoping she’d walk by a window, or come out on the
balcony to say “hello”, but no such luck haha. The Changing of the Guard was
really cool! It took a while, but it was so beautiful out, that it was still
all very enjoyable. We took some great pictures, and enjoyed watching the
marching, and listening to the band that was playing. We were actually a little
shocked when we heard the choices of music they were playing! We thought it
would be like the National Anthem, or at least the Liberty Bell March or
something, but no. They played the Jurassic Park theme music, as well as a
compilation of songs from the musical “Chicago”, which Kimmy and I enjoyed and
were singing and dancing along while they were playing. As the Pomp and
Circumstance was dying down Kimmy and I started walking over to Hyde Park, but
were stopped by a Bobbie until the procession had completely stopped. He was
quite the character, and a super funny guy.
We walked on over to Hyde Park, which I never realized how big it
was! Kimmy and I walked from one end to the other, and it was a long walk.
Thankfully, the weather was absolutely gorgeous, so we really enjoyed walking
through the park. We saw the gardens, the Princess Diana Memorial, the little
pond with paddle boats, and many statues, but of course my favorite was the
Peter Pan Memorial Statue.
After walking all the way through Hyde Park, we headed over to the
British Museum. Now, there is a BUNCH of stuff in there, but we didn’t really
have a huge amount of time to spend there, so there were a few things that I
really wanted to see, then we moved on. We spent most of our time in the
Ancient Greece and Egyptian section, and of course saw the Rosetta Stone. That
was really neat to see. The basis of language and communication as we know it
came from this stone! There were a lot of people trying to see it, so we didn’t
stay there for long before moving on to see the Greek section of statues and
other sculptures. We were there for a little while then headed over to the
Egyptian mummy section, which, call me creepy, but I’ve always found
fascinating. How the Ancient Egyptians took care of the dead, and how amazingly
preserved these bodies are was always really cool to me. So we saw a few
mummies, and we even got to see Cleopatra’s mummy. All the mummy’s that I saw
also had a picture of their CAT scan, and it was interesting to see how the
people embalming them took out there organs then put them back in the chest
cavity. Also, the way they injected liquid in to the head after the brain had
been removed to preserve the body. Very neat. The other cool thing Kimmy showed
we was more of a “Social Art Experiment” and it was about the amount of drugs
prescribed to people every year. This artist physical represented the amount of
medication that the average person will take in their life time, put every pill
in its own little pocket in nylon and it was rolled out for you to walk by. It
was so crazy to see this physical representation of the amount of drugs that
the average person will put in their body in their life time!
We left the British Museum, and we didn’t get to spend that much
time there, but it really is more of a “Day Adventure”, thankfully it’s free to
go in, so I didn’t feel bad about leaving fairly early haha. Before heading
back to Kimmy’s place to relax, we stopped by the British Library, which held
pieces of the Magna Carta, writings from Leonardo Di Vinci, religious texts,
AND the original first drafts (hand written) of some of the Beatles songs. The
Magna Carta was neat, I’m not as in to history like Ben, so I was more excited
about some of the other stuff that was there. We checked out the Di Vinci
writings which are written in “Mirror Style” since Di Vincia was left handed,
we wrote from right to left on his papers instead of left to right. Even though
it was in Italian and I wouldn’t be able to read it even if it wasn’t mirrored,
it was still really neat to see his journal and what he dashed down about his
theories of arithmetic and such. Even his mathematic equations were backwards!
It was neat. Then of course there were the Beatles writings. They had the
original hand written first drafts of “Michelle” (written on the back of an
envelope), “Yesterday”, “Ticket to Ride”, “Help!” and another one that was
written on the back of a Birthday Card, which I can’t remember right now. I
obviously thought this was really cool, and the thing I found the most
fascinating was how all these lyrics were just written on scrap paper. Things that
were lying around the house. These men were so talented that they would have
inspiration strike and they’d pick up whatever was around to jot it down as
quickly as they could. On the display it has a little story of how Paul
McCartney wrote “Yesterday” and apparently he woke up with the song in his
head, the melody the lyrics, and was convinced it was already a song. He
thought he had heard it before and it was stuck in his head, nope. He just came
up with one of the most popularly covered song in the history of pop music,
subconsciously while sleeping. Fascinating.
That evening after we had our “quiet” time we went out to a pub
for our last meal together in London. I got fish and chips. Yes, I know that
doesn’t sound like me at all, but Ben made me promise to have some for him
since he couldn’t be with me in London, plus I wanted to try the local food, so
Fish and Chips it was. It wasn’t too bad, thankfully it was very fried and
didn’t taste much like fish. Kimmy and I talked over our meal, and we hung out
at the pub for a little while. Once we were finished we decided to head back to
her place, and get my stuff so I could start my journey home. We got my stuff,
then took a bus to Liverpool Street Station, where I then (just barely) got on
to another bus that took me out to Stansted airport, then I took a cab to my
Bed and Breakfast for the evening. I checked in and quickly prepared myself for
the long trip the next morning. Took a shower, got into bed and watched some
South Park before going to “sleep”.
I woke up the next morning at 5:00 after a long night of not much
sleep to start the second part of my journey home.
