Ok, so sorry this is a few days late, but I was too tired to write about my awesome trip to London this past weekend when I got back on Sunday and then my computer yelled at me last night because it was dying and I couldn't charge it because I had lent out my charger to someone thinking it had been charging for the past few hours I had been on it, but it hadn't because the outlet wasn't on! (yeah, they have little switches on their outlets to turn them on and off. it's hard to remember that.) So here I am now to tell you all about my London Adventure, which will start on Friday morning because all I chose to do was sleep when we got in on Thursday night.
Friday:
Two of my friends and I had dedicated Friday to sightseeing. So the first thing we did after breakfast was break out our map to make sure we knew where we were going and set off down the road (and through a little park, with some turns here and there) to the British Museum, which was only a few blocks away. I thought the museum was pretty cool. It's basically all of the stuff that the British took from their colonies when they had their huge empire. There was a ton of Egyptian and Greek stuff! Egypt was what we saw first. There were all the statues of different gods and such, which was cool, but what I really liked looking at was the mummies. They had a lot of them there. I think it's neat to see how the dead were treated and buried and all of that at different points in history. Some people may think it's creepy and disrespectful to have them all out on display like that, but I think that if you're dead you're dead and future people can feel free to display me if they find my body/burial interesting for some reason. After that I think we kind of saw a bit of Assyrian stuff, but I'm not entirely sure because apparently I didn't take a picture of a sign so that I would actually remember what I was taking pictures of. We also got to see a little bit of Iran, but then they wanted to look at the Greek stuff, which disappointed me because I love learning about the Middle East and we didn't get to go into that section. We didn't get to the more modern Britain/Europe stuff either, which I wanted to see. But it's only an hour away by train and the museum is free so I can always go back! The Greek area had a lot of the facing of the Parthenon and statues and things like that. Which was pretty cool, but not what I'm very interested in. The bit of British/Europe things that we got to look through was the best. Like everything else there was a lot of pottery and statues and such, but there was also things like remains from Roman Legion armor and one of the oldest British burials that they've found. The guy was all curled up like he was sleeping, it was cute! On our way out we passed some totem poles, which made me really excited and I made them stop so I could take pictures and read the signs. I hadn't heard of one of the tribes, but the other was Haida! (since I'm sure you don't understand why I was so excited over this, let me explain: we spent several weeks on that Northwest tribe in my Anthropology course last semester.) To make it even better, I was able to recognize some of the animals on it! I didn't look too closely at it, so I wasn't able to tell what moity it was but I can always look at my picture again and figure it out.
After the museum we turned down Tottingham Court Road/Charing Cross Road (the name changes right around where we were) and headed off towards the River Thames and the Houses of Parliament. There were a ton of restaurants and shops down this road! We passed the theatre where we were going to go later that night, so of course we had to take a picture of it in the daylight. We made it to Wesminster and the Houses of Parliament a few minutes before noon so we passed the time taking pictures of the building until Big Ben chimed. (for those of you who weren't aware, Big Ben is the bell, not the tower.) I wanted to take the stereotypical picture of Parliament, so off we went across the bridge so I could stand halfway over the Thames and take it. It turned out quite nicely. There happened to be a man playing the bagpipes on the bridge as well, so that was fun music to listen to while getting the shot.
A quick lunch of sandwiches followed at a little cafe we found and then it was back down the street to Westminster Abbey! This was one of the places that you had to pay to get in, but it was totally worth it. There was so much history in there, and so many dead people! You literally almost couldn't walk without stepping on someone's stone. Pictures weren't allowed in here unfortunately, but I got some very nice exterior ones! We got to see a lot of famous and royal resting places. Among them were Chaucer, Charles Darwin, various King Richards and Edwards and Henrys, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Mary I and Elizabeth I (Henry VIII's daughters). I found Mary and Elizabeth's graves particularly humorous, particularly since they were the ones that I most wanted to see. There are signs pointing the way to their graves, but when you get there, all you see is the sleeping statue of Elizabeth! Mary must just be chillin' underneath her. Our speculation is that it must have been a prime piece of real estate in the Abbey and Elizabeth was determined to get it and not be shunted off into some less important side chamber. Of course, I doubt that's true, but it was fun to come up with all the same! Westminster Abbey was were I made my first souvenir purchase of the trip. It's a lovely mug with a black and white picture of Parliament and such with a red bus. Classy, not tacky. And once I find some hot chocolate it will totally be worth it!
After Westminster Abbey we walked over to Buckingham Palace. We didn't see the changing of the guards, but we did see them moving around! And, to make it even better, the flag was flying so the Queen was in residence! I was super excited about that. Loads of pictures were taken of the palace, the square in front of it, and the surrounding gardens. Then we set off down a road to head back to our hotel so we could change before dinner and a show. We had made it part of the way back when it started pouring down rain! We had our umbrellas, but we still rushed off to the nearest underground station, especially once we looked down and saw that it was hailing too! (well, actually, it was the second nearest station, the first was closed and flooding.) There we bought our Oyster Cards (since we were going to be coming back multiple times it made more sense) and got on the trains to go back to our hotel.
By the time we left for dinner, it had stopped raining, which was good! We ate at a nice restaurant called med kitchen, which my dad payed for because he wanted me to have a nice birthday dinner. And it was very good! Then we went to go see Mousetrap, the ticket was my friends' birthday present to me. Mousetrap is a play by Agatha Christie and is in it's 59th year, making it the longest running play in history! And it was amazing. Not only was the story very good (it was Agatha Christie, obviously it was going to be good) but the acting was superb. It was like watching a movie instead of a play. Now, I can't tell you the ending because the actors came out afterwards and swore us to secrecy so that "the magic of the play could continue" and I'm not going to ruin it for any of you! Suffice it to say that it is totally worth it. Even if you buy the cheapest tickets like we did in the balcony. You could still see the actor's expressions, it was that small of a theatre.
After the play consisted of walking around our hotel for a bit, then going back in to eat some Ben & Jerry's from the vending machine and trying and failing to find some good British TV. Also for me, it included resting my feet, which had started to get blisters. I didn't know how soft the balls of my feet had gotten since I finished softball!
Saturday: Saturday was our designated shopping day. We got a little later start than we had the day before, but that was fine because we still had plenty of time to do everything we wanted to. We started out by walking to Covent Gardens. Outside it there's a lot of nice boutiques and bigger shops that we spent most of our time looking around in. Alayna bought a nice coat on sale at H&M. Our lunch was another little cafe, eat on the go, type thing and we found a bench to sit on while we ate. Which turned out to be quite a good spot! There were several street actors there who kept us entertained, including one who looked uncannily like Johnny Depp! He was dressed up as Jack Sparrow and had the mannerisms down and everything! It was pretty neat. The actual Covent Gardens seemed to be a lot of little eating places and more expensive (at least for us) boutiques, so we didn't spend much time there.
Our next stop was Portobello Road, in Notting Hill. We took the tube to get there, because it is a long ways away. Our intended route was actually closed for maitenance, so we had to figure out an alternate route! We figured it out pretty quickly though and got there alright. Portobello Road turns into a HUGE market on Saturdays. Once in the market proper there was no way a car could get down the road, and before that they only could with much honking. We didn't get to go all the way down it, just halfway, but it was still pretty cool to see. There were a lot of antique and jewelry shops and stands where we were. I ended up buying a couple pairs of earrings at a cute little place called Oi! where their daughter was in the shop and just learning to walk. It was so cute! We also made it far enough down to a Cath Kidston store, which we compared to Vera Bradley. Alayna found the over-the-shoulder purse that she wanted and Christine found a nice wallet. It was much too girly and flowery for me, so I spent much of my time huddled in a corner, trying to stay out of the way of the sale-shoppers.
We made the long ride back to the hotel before walking to King's Cross Station, which wasn't that far away, so that we could go to Platform 9 3/4! We got there alright, but we couldn't find the platform! Alayna had to ask the people at the information desk where it was and he replied "on holiday in Northern Ireland" before telling her where it actually was. We were on the right path but just hadn't walked down far enough. We were disappointed when we got there though. There was construction going on so the actual platform wasn't there. It was just some brick wallpaper stuck up on a construction wall with the (real) sign for Platform 9 3/4 and the partly pushed through cart on it. The pictures still turned out good, but we plan on going back in the spring to see if it's all done and back to where it should be. Hopefully it will be! If not, oh well.
Then we walked back to the hotel so Christine could get ready for date night and Alayna and I could decide what we wanted to do for dinner. It was also so I could rest my feet. I'm not going to lie, they really really really hurt (I was walking on the sides of my feet by this time) and I was not in the best of moods. It didn't help any that my allergies were worse there too. But I digress. Alayna and I decided to look around and ended up at a place called Pizza Express. It had pretty good pizza, but definitely not enough cheese. And I felt like I had to cut it since everyone else around us was. Using a fork with pizza is just not natural!
After that we went back to the hotel for a bit and tried to figure out what to do. Since we didn't really want to spend much money, going to a bar or something was out. We ended up discovering that the Tate Modern was open till 10, so we took the underground over there and walked around looking at modern art and trying to figure out our own interpretations of it for an hour or so. The fact that a lot of museums are free here is so nice! We were going to walk over to the Tower Bridge after that since it was pretty close, but there was a lot of construction and stuff around so we just ended up going back to the hotel, where we had a much more successful round 2 of Ben & Jerry's and TV! We found this historical celebrity game show, which was fun to listen to. Someone compared the Bayeux Tapestry to Facebook! Then we watched a show like Whose Line is it Anyways, which was very entertaining.
Sunday: We left London this day, so we checked out of our rooms and waited for the buses to arrive and pick us up. After that we took an our trip out to the suburbs and went to Hampton Court Palace! (we were also in Surrey for about 5 seconds, which made me happy, but also sad because I didn't know it until after the fact. It's where the Dursleys live everyone.) Mini history lesson here: Hampton Court was originally built by Cardinal Wolsey, who was the main chancellor (basically the second in command) to King Henry VIII. When Henry wanted to divorce Katharine of Aragon (wife #1) and marry Anne Boleyn, he asked Wolsey to secure him a divorce from the Pope. Wolsey was unable to do this (the Pope had already given him special permission to marry Katharine 20 years earlier) and fell out of favor with the King. In an attempt to save himself and his position, Wolsey gave Hampton Court to Henry VIII. It didn't work and Wolsey was eventually sent to prison and died there. Henry himself simply embraced Martin Luther's ideas and started an new Church of England with himself as the head and divorced Katharine and married Anne anyways. This is the original Palace. The palace has since been added onto by King William III and Queen Mary II. You can see the difference in styles of both architecture and interior design when you walk through the rooms. We had about 3.5-4 hours at Hampton Court and I immediately set off on my own to explore. I started off with the young Henry VIII section, which included much on Cardinal Wolsey as well and then somehow ended up in William III's rooms! I went through them and then went out to find Henry's apartments, which was really amazing to look through, simply because I love learning about him and his family so much. I also got to see his kitchens, which were three ginormous rooms, and his big wine cellar, where things were kept by the barrel. I then went to see Mary II's rooms, which were even more elaborate than her husband's, before going out to explore the grounds. The grounds are massive! There is so much to walk around and see. I thought I had walked around all of them and was wondering where the maze was so I pulled out my map and discovered that I had only seen half of the grounds! So I made my way to the other half and found the maze. It took a bit, but I found the center! While I was in the grounds I also saw some deer, the oldest vine in Britain (it makes a ton of grapes), a swan fishing, some goldfish that, if I remember what was told to me correctly, were the descendents of the fish that Wolsey gave to Anne as an attempt to get in her favor and therefore stay in the King's, and a film set, which someone apparently found out was Sherlock Holmes 2 (I don't know if that's true or not, I just thought it was some historical promotional thing like most people did, but we'll find out eventually I suppose!). I had lunch in the Privy Kitchen Cafe in the Palace, the cookie was good, but an egg sandwich should really not have a 2/3 mayonnaise to 1/3 egg ratio. After that it was about time to find the buses and take the 2.5 hour trip back to Harlaxton.
Whew! That was a lot of stuff! There was a lot I didn't get to see that I really wanted to, but since I know I'm going to go back at least once more before I come back to the States, I think seeing less and walking more was totally worth it. Even if my feet don't agree! Tune in next week when I'll get to tell you all about my day trip to York!
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