London Town

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After doing a bit of traveling I have realized how lucky we are to be living in Paris. For a number of reasons, but one in particular is it's central location and abundance of travel resources in and out of the city. We have three airports to choose from and 7 different train stations to find the cheapest and easiest route. Whereas our friends who live in Granada or Marseilles have a little more leg work to do to get anywhere...
Our next stop was London, but we could only find a flight there out of Madrid, not a bad place to have an extra night. Dani and I took a 6 hour bus from Granada to Madrid, where we did our own walking tour of the city and had an early night to catch our flight the next day. We ended up spending more time in Madrid than planned however, due to the snow storms in London during the week we had an 8 hour flight delay. We weren't even so sure that the flight would take off that night, since we met a guy who was back for day two of waiting after the same flight had been pushed back yesterday. We decided to chance it and chatted and drank wine with a nice English family until our plane finally took off at 11:30pm. The fun didn't stop there, since we flew into the cheaper airport we still had over an hour of taxi-ing to do since the bus services weren't running that late. We met a really nice guy in line while waiting so the three of us split a cab into Piccadilly. During our taxi ride I felt like I was on some sort of drugs-- we were picked up by a 30 year old white male in dreads, taken to an unmarked taxi, and driven on the left side of the road while listening to the most outrageous mix of techno music imaginable. Eventually we made it into our hostel beds around 3:30 a.m.
When we woke up late the next morning, Dani and I were gifted by a Whole Foods Market right next to our hostel! It became the spot of our breakfasts and dinners for the next three nights 😊 We did the Free London Tour which took us to Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. It was cold and rainy, but still fun to see the monuments and buildings I had read so much about. We were told of places we could buy half price theater tickets during the tour so after we bough 19 pound tickets to see Wicked! It was such an incredible show! It's a spoof story on Wizard of Oz and the history of the "Wicked" Witch. The singers were amazing and the set was done beautifully.
London felt like a break from traveling in a way. It was such a relief to be able to speak English and all the museums were free, so we were able to save some money and communicate! We went to the British National Museum which holds the Rosetta Stone. We also went to the National Gallery and saw Manet, Monet, Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Rafael, and Da Vinci! It was such a treat to escape the rain and see these incredible pieces of art for free.
I hadn't planned on seeing London when I arrived, but I'm glad that we had the time to see this beautiful city and learn some of the important history of this city.

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Photos

Une fleur pour moi!
Madrid

Harry Potter!
Well, of course, we had to!

Comments

[erin]

beautiful
'ello! your pictures are beautiful! i especially love the one of big ben and the london eye. can't wait to see you again!