London to Dusseldorf to San Francisco

I didn’t get much sleep the night before I left for home, and what sleep I did get it wasn’t a very deep sleep. I was really nervous about flying by myself, in particularly my ride to the airport would arrive at the airport around 6:10, and my flight was scheduled to leave at 7:25. I was concerned that I would not have enough time to check my bags and go through security so I was anxious all night about missing my first flight to Dusseldorf. I woke up, got everything ready and got my ride, arriving at the airport around 6:05 (early!) and I walked in to find the Air Berlin desk to check my bags. It was a desert. This place was bare, and that was really exciting for me because I figured I’d have plenty of time and will most certainly catch my flight.

I checked my bags and the lady was very nice and helpful, then moved on over towards security. Once again I was very impressed with the British service, they were just all so nice. Very much Unlike the TSA in the States, who I feel, are just a bunch of individuals on a power trip. They all just had a smile on their face and we’re very accommodating. Unfortunately I went through the metal detector and it went off meaning I had to get a really inappropriate pat down, but whatever I was excited to officially be starting my journey home. I walked to the gate and didn’t have to wait very long before boarding. Even the plane was bare, with very few people on it. I was sitting in the second row from the front and there was no one sitting next to me or in the 2 seats in front of me, and to my left, there was only one person in each row. It was awesome. That flight was very quick, and I noticed for some reason that the Head Steward kept going in to the cockpit. I had never seen that before. The guy went in there at least 4 times during our short hour long flight. Curious. As we landed, and pulled up to the gate, before any one was allowed off, 2 paramedics came on the plane and into the cockpit. I couldn’t see much, but they were taking the pulse of one of the pilots, and (from the back of him) it looked like maybe he was unconscious or just waking up. I think one of our pilots had fainted! That was crazy to think about, but heck, we were in Dusseldorf safely, and there was no panic or anything. So if that was the situation Air Berlin handled it very well.

I got off the plane in Dusseldorf, and had about 3 hours before my next flight, so I slowly walked through the passport control booth (twice-there were 2 that I had to go through) found my gate, and basically hung out for a while. I used one of the internet booths to check in with Ben really quickly and got myself a little sandwich, but otherwise I just hung out in the airport for a while.

They started calling our names and I was one of the last to board the plane, so I found my seat, an aisle seat. Yes! It was an aisle seat on the edge of the middle cluster of 4 seats. I looked over, and there was no one in the other 3 seats. I was one of the last people on the plane, does that mean what I think it means? Heck yes! Whole row of 4 seats all to myself for this 12 hour flight. That will make it much more bearable. I even moved over one so I could stretch my legs longer (plus there was a guy sitting behind my aisle seat, so I didn’t want to recline into him).

I had a fairly comfortable flight, well as comfortable as a 12 hour flight could be. I landed in San Francisco, and fairly quickly went through customs, got my bags and met up with my parents. It was so nice to see them and to officially be home. 

Homeward Bound...Stop Over in London

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.