London

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Hey all. It's been awhile since the last blog, sorry about that. Well, Allie and I spent 4 great days in London. We got there around 7am from an overnight bus. Lemme tell ya, one thing we will absolutely not do in any future traveling is travel overnight or early morning by bus. It is way too exhausting. We didn't get much sleep again and arrived at Victoria Station around morning rush hour. The Victoria Station is in a 'posh' part of town. It is really close to Buckingham Palace, a close walk to the Houses of Parliment, etc. I will get to that later. One of the things about that particular station is that it is a main hub where a lot of the tube lines meet and people can transfer to different lines, trains, and even to the buses. It was very busy, and Allie and I had a hard time getting around with our luggage. One of the things we both noticed right away was that most people were not willing to wait patiently for us to get our bags off the train, on to the escalators, and so on and so forth. Instead, many people pushed in front of us and we were left struggling with our bags and then being hemmed in and waiting our turn. Eventually, we decided if we wanted to move forward we couldn't wait and would have to 'push' our way through as well. We said a lot of ''sorry''s and ''excuse me''s. I think that showed right away that we were tourists. We slowly learned how to be ruthless city travelers.

Allie and I did make it to our hostel, stowed our bags then went to walk around the King's Cross area. That is more in northeast London and about a 40 minute walk from Victoria (I think) but the area around there was, again, 'posh.' I can't tell you how many BMWs, Porsches, and Lexus we saw. Not to mention a few Jags, several Maserattis, and a couple Aston Martins. Speaking for myself, I enjoyed watching them all. An average one or two bedroom apartment was about £1-2million! Ridiculous! I guess that's kind of like New York? Anyway, Allie and I wandered around a bit and ended up in Regent's Park. It was really pretty out (we finally had sun and warmer weather!) so we decided to sit and read for a bit. However, we ended up falling asleep because we were so tired from traveling, and slept for a couple hours. Even though it was midday, there were lots of people doing the same thing.

Later that day, we met up with our friend from Plymouth, Drew. We studied together in Germany, and he made a special trip to London to see us. He even booked a bed in the same hostel. It was great, just like ol' Germany times haha. There wasn't much to do in the hostels so we all walked around north London for 3 hours. Yes, I know, it seems highly unlikely that your two couch-potato, non-exercising girls would willing walk for that long. But I promise you that it is the truth! The three of us meandered around lots of streets with no specific direction in mind. If we saw an interesting building or pub, we'd head in that direction. All-in-all it was a great day.

The next day Drew, Allie, and I went to the more tourist-y areas of London. We saw Hyde Park, Covent Garden, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliment, and Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately, the changing of the guards was cancelled because of the bomb threat. Don't worry, it was only an unattended bag or something similiar. No one seemed to be taking it very seriously and there weren't any police or anything like that. We took a few pictures and walked aimlessly around again. I should warn everyone that we don't think our pictures are going to turn out very well. We might have 2 or 3 that are sunny, but the rest look gray and rainy. And we have very few with ourselves in the picture.

Our last day in London was, for the most part, uneventful. However, some time in the afternoon Allie made friends with an American who was traveling around the world by himself. He said he had $8000 that he was using to go wherever he next fancied to visit. (Notice the word 'fancied?' I'm picking up Brit-speak.) Whilst he made us jealous about his sumptuous financial status, I guess we made him feel guilty about ours. Or at least he took pity on us. So, in exchange for keeping him company and walking around London (again!) he bought us dinner. We protested, he insisted. What's the proper etiquette here? Obviously it was to accept; we're on tight budgets! At the end of the day, we parted and went our separate ways. Him, having seen parts of London. Us, with full stomachs.

There is one thing that I have to say about London. It was, by far, the best city we've been in. I can't really explain the reason behind that feeling because every city has had it's own pretty buildings, tasty restaurants, and nice people. But of all the cities, London would be the city that I would want to return to. I would be lucky to find a job there, and I would love to live there. If I was ok being so far from my family, that is. But London was, for me, the best part of our trip to date. Hugs and kisses to all. And the adventure continues!
-S

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