Day 12: London, I missed you.

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So, overnight bus ride was interesting! First off, some jerk woke me up (JUST AFTER I managed to fall asleep) to ask to sit beside me when there were two other seats with just a backpack on them rather than a sleeping person. Jerk. Thankfully one stop later (about 20min) he moved over.

I wasn’t taking any chances after that – instead of just sitting sideways huddled in a ball to sleep, I took full over – I can’t explain how I slept, but essentially I was completely across my two seats, with my butt touching the far-side/armrest by the window, then my legs crossed like a 4-yr old kid propped straight up into the window. I looked like a complete idiot, but I didn’t care – too comfy. No picture proof, but we’ll think to take a photo on our next overnighter.

Once in London I was brilliant and brought us the wrong way haha – but at least I realized after only about 3min of walking 😉 Once we finally got to the hostel we just got changed and headed off to explore along the Thames, up towards Big Ben and company.

First things first, we needed a bank because apparently Northern Irish pounds are not well loved here – like, they look so completely different they don’t even look like sterling pounds. The hostel wasn’t pleased that we paid in them, and the corner store really wasn’t happy... so we swapped them out at a Barclay’s. (The guy teased me about it too)

(Another sidenote: there are no trashcans in London. We made a game of how long I’d have to walk around with my apple core before finding a stupid litter bin.)

ANYWAY! We walked along the Thames up to some gardens around Parliament, bummed around there and took in the sites. We popped into St. Mary’s, took pictures of Westminster Abbey and chuckled at the price to go in. (Ahahaha no.) We heard Big Ben bing-bong for noon and wandered over that way to take pictures and such. Oh yes, and we watched the London Eye slowly turn... ever... so slowly.

From there I wanted to go up to show Em the Horse Guard or whatever that building/area is called near St. James Park, but most of the area is closed in prep for the Olympics. I have to say, for the Olympics only being 2 and a half weeks away... some stuff doesn’t look at all ready. But then again, other signs are up super early so I guess it will even out. I just keep seeing traffic warnings and tube warnings everywhere – this place is going to be a holy nightmare during the Olympics, traffic-wise. Sure glad we’re missing that.

Anywho. We did get to see the guards on the horses – photos were not optimal as kids and little old ladies kept finding themselves into our photos rather than waiting their turns. Ahem. We then headed up to Trafalgar Square for tons of photos around there with the lion statues and all the lovely fountains. We were unsuccessful in climbing up the statues haha – I had been laughing at some people, but once we tried I realized there was no solid footing... le sigh.

Canada House was open so we went to see since I thought there was an exhibit... we missed it by two days and the guy was just looking at us like we were insane. How un-Canadian monsieur, way to represent.

We used the National Gallery as a free place to pee (we’re getting quite good at finding free toilets!) and then slowly meandered towards Leicester Square – I love walking through all the theatre area... if I loved here it would be obscene how much I’d spend on going to the theatre. We sat in Leicester Square garden to eat our lunch and roamed around the little streets on our way to Piccadilly Circus – we also popped into the M&M store and bought entirely too much choco lol and popped into Fortnun and Mason – a way expensive tea/bakery/chocolate store – how would you like a £20 cuppa? Yeah, I thought so.

Then we were off to Green Park! Green Park is interesting – it has all the green fold-up chairs that I always thought was such a cool idea (going back to the first time I was in London.) Today I found out you had to pay to sit in them...!! Ruined the coolness factor haha. Still a beautiful park though. It connects through to Buckingham Palace, so we puttered around there for a bit – taking pictures of Canada Gate and of course of the palace and its fountain. We also found the Canadian memorial (for WW2)... which was currently being used in a game of hide and seek for 10 screaming running children. Wonderful.

And poor Ducrieff had a tough day today. He got stuck in Canada Gate and had two nasty tumbles off some fence thing near Buckingham Palace. He’s still kicking though! The travelling lemon is still in play. (We’re taking pictures with a lemon everywhere we go – it’s a Cabin Pressure thing which is a British radio show. I’m a nerd, ok. It’s awesome.)

Aaaaaand that was pretty much our day! Back at the hostel we had some, uhm, interesting times with the staff... including an argument about whether or not the room is clean (we made them clean) and having a room on essentially the 8^th floor. Oh so many stairs..!!

We met some cool Canadians though! One of the guys came to sit with us at supper and helped us plan our schedule for the next two days. He’s been “visiting” London for two months lol, don’t think he’s going back to Guelph any time soon. He was great though – besides talking us through some stuff, we had a lot of fun joking about Canada, eh? All the eh!!

Another Canadian girl came to join us too – she’s from the ‘Peg and is doing the SWAP program for two years. I think that’s so neat... I’d potentially work/live here for two years if my visa crap was taken of... maybe. Cool idea anyway. I really liked her because she asked if I was wearing a Sherlock shirt (smiley face shirt!) I was like YES! SHERLOCKIANS FOREVERRRRR. Ahahaha. She told me where St. Bart’s was and we like compared notes on the nerdy Sherlock stuff we’re going to do/she’s already done. I love it.

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