sevilla holds two holy/fiesta weeks in the spring, which translates into two spring breaks for us. these breaks do cause our program end date to be later, but it's nice to have my travels split up instead of a 3 week backpacking trip at the end. as you've realized, at least a couple weeks have passed since my long (a bit too much so) trip through london, paris, and barcelona, but i will use my photos as a guide and try to detail as much as I can. it was a full eight and a little days of travel, so you should be in for a nice, long post :)
i left sevilla friday night (march 14) to fly from sevilla to london stansted (which is situated a wonderful hour and a half oustide the city). check-in, security, etc. went smoothly and i even made friends with some other american students since I was flying this flight solo and meeting up with my friends in the london airport to make our way into the city. no sooner than we had stepped into line to board the plane, did i run into my first of many adventures this trip would produce. my friend's flight to london had been delayed 2 hours, leaving me to find my way from the airport to my friend's apartment all on my lonesome (good thing my mom didn't know this was happening). but as i had well researched my routes and watched many episodes of amazing race, i found my way and am fairly certain i would not have been eliminated had this been a check-point. to make matters even worse, apparently the cell phones my friends and i have do not function in london. would have been nice to know ahead of time, but some nice people on the street let me borrow theirs so i could call my next year's roommate who is studying in london and find her apartment. by 3AM i was safe and sound in her extra bunk bed.
saturday:
woke up early :( to meet our other roommate for next year, siri, at the glouchester st. tube station. since her parents decided to go on sabatical to berlin for the semester she was able to fly out for UW's spring break to visit them, and stop by london for a few days on her way. she was abroad in berlin in the fall, so i hadn't seen her since last may and was super excited for the rondevouz.
we spent saturday hitting all three of london's famous markets: portobello market in notting hill, borough market (the food market) near london bridge, and camden st. market (although only for a few mimnutes because it started to rain and we were sans umbrellas).
lindsay (roommate studying in london) had us get off at a tube stop and made not look up until we were walking up the exit steps. we looked up to see we were at the base of big ben staring up at the massive structure. so from there we saw big ben, parliament, the london eye (huge ferris wheel made of numerous 20-person occupancy pods), and the thames river.
got to make dinner! for only the second time this trip. and had spaghetti with sauce and sauteéd mushrooms. yum
thought we were heading to an irish pub for a pre st.patrick's day celebration, but wound up at oktoberfest pub (so obviously german). turned out to be a fabulous time. a group of waiters dressed in lederhosen formed a live band of trumpets, tubas, french horns, etc. and proceeded to play german sing-alongs, along with a little billie jean, ymca, livin' on a prayer, to name a few.
sunday:
slept in for a late start, which is most unlike my typical traveling routine - up early and jam-packed. but since we had four days in london there was no need to rush and the london part of the trip was more about fun with my roomates than serious sightseeing for a nice change.
went to trafalgar square to see the st.pattys day festivities. there were tons of people, food stands, irish flags, and a live band. walked around for a bit, but not tons to see.
went to london's national gallery of paintings, my favorites being many gorgeous monét's (some from his poplars series, and of london's parliament at different times of day) and van gough's sunflowers.
went to harrod's, the ridiculously large and extravagant department store, and wandered through many of the luxurious rooms
homemade dinner again! siri and i bought two big containers of pre-cut stirfry veggies (broccoli, peppers, spinach, carrots, bean sprouts, onions, etc.) and couscous. sooo good and exactly what i've been craving, but couldn't get anywhere.
got decked out in our red/badgers t-shirts and went to the sports café to watch the end of the big ten championship with a huge group of badgers. at midnight we celebrated siri's 21st birthday with many photos and many drinks for her. she had a great time so it was fun :)
monday:
another friend of lindsay's came to visit for the day, so we made monday our big sightseeing day.
saw kensington palace, which is right across the street from lindsays apartment building, and then wandered through hyde park and st. james park all the way to buckingham palace. we saw the famous peter pan statue, statue of queen victoria, and princess diana's memorial.
buckingam palace, westminster abbey, tower of london, tower bridge.
natural history museum (with a huge animatronic t-rex and life-size blue whale recreation)
went out for indian food for siri's birthday because it's her favorite and indian restaurants are all over the place in london. so we just strolled out lindsays door and picked one out of the few that line glouchester road around the corner. the restaurant was across from the famous pizza place that princess diana frequented. the food was really good, probably because i decided to order siri's favorite since she's the expert. i had aloo gobi, which is just cauliflower and potato in a spicy curry sauce (siri's a vegetarian), and it was delicious. afterwards we stopped by two local pubs because we weren't up for the wild st.patrick's day celebrating. at one of the places, the one where we had yummy strawberry beer, lindsay said her friends have seen jude law and hugh grant. separately, on regular days of the week. kensington is the posh area of london, so this could be true, but no such celebrity spottings for us. we stopped by one more place and then made our way home.
tuesday:
lindsay had class so siri and i took the tube to covent garden, an area of cute shops and street performers. we walked around taking pictures of signs, saw the opera house and a famous statue of a ballerina, watched some performers, and looked in the shop windows. with the pound being worth two dollars there was no way i was going to even enter a clothes store. after a while we tubed it back to lindsays and gathered our stuff. i met up with a group of my friends from sevilla to continue on to paris and then barcelona and siri left to fly to berlin to meet up with her family.
so after an hour bus ride to a different obscure london airport and another ontime flight, we arrived in paris. where more adventures were about to begin...
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