The Return to London

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So, first of all I would like to apologize for the delay. I know that you guys have much better things to do than read my blog. However, I feel like since I didn’t update closer to the actual times of these trips that I am somehow going to missing a lot of details. Hopefully, the most important things are still in my memory. 

Up to this point in my blog I have done all my traveling with Lindsey, but my second trip to London (the one I will tell you about here) was with the three study abroad students living in my hall. Their names are Heather, Sarah and Amy. Heather and Amy are from the states and Sarah is from Canada. They are really fun girls who like to have a good time. I was looking forward to the weekend with them. Plus, I was like OBSESSED with London because I had such a great time when I first arrived in the UK.

The plan for the weekend was a little unclear because Amy and I both did the London orientation tour and the other two had not. This was problematic because the things we saw on our tour were like some of the major spots most people should see when they visit London. But, as you would expect Amy and I didn’t really want to see the same things twice even though we would have done it if it would make things easier. Anyways, so the loose plan was that those 3 girls were to go early on Friday and then I would come after my classes and since they were supposed to be there all day Friday without me, they would do some of those important things I had already seen. Unfortunately, there had been quite a bit of snow (to England-maybe an inch??) and their coach ride took nearly all day and had only arrived a few hours before I did. So, they didn’t much done that day. This was the start of our extremely unlucky weekend. Haha I had some coach problems, but not nearly as bad as theirs. Mine was just an hour late. Once I got into London around 7 pm it took me forever to figure out where they were because I was at Victoria coach station but they were at Victoria TRAIN station!! I finally found them after a half an hour of confusion and then found out that our hostel was an HOUR bus ride from the West End of London (the place we wanted to be). Ugh. I was a little frustrated but I figured everything would be alright. Well, then I saw the hostel…it was in a very shady part of town right next to a bar/club thing. I still tried to stay positive though. Our room was smelly because there was a leak from the sink, but at least we had the room to ourselves. I could deal with the mildew. However, there were sirens literally all night and I could hardly sleep. Oh well, the next morning I still tried to be positive because if there is one thing I have learned about traveling it is to not be difficult. It is hard enough to please one person, let alone four. I try to just suck it up and keep spirits high!

Saturday started off smoothly with our hour bus ride back into town. We were headed for St. Paul’s cathedral. This cathedral was of particular interest because there is a very tall dome that you can go to the top of and have very nice views of London. Also, Amy and I hadn’t been there yet. Unfortunately, we found out that you have to pay to get up to the top. Heather was too please about this so her and Sarah went off to Westminster Abbey and Amy and I stayed at St. Paul’s. Just like most of the other cathedral’s I have the opportunity to view, it was breathtakingly huge and amazingly detail. The attention to detail never fails to amaze me. It was in this church that I first went into a crypt. A little creepy but still very cool. These dead people are treated very well indeed. After the crypt we decided to take a little trip up to the dome. The VERY top had some construction going on but we could go to the level just below that, so we did. I think the pictures can speak for themselves. It was very cool to see London from that point of view. We were also lucky enough to have some blue skies that day!! Amy and I had a good time at St. Paul’s just walking around and talking. After we thought Heather and Sarah had had enough time at Westminster Abbey we went over to find them. All of us then walked to a cheap grocery store to grab lunch and by the time we were done we realized we needed to get back to our hostel to get ready for the musical that started at 7. We saw Wicked and that was by far the best part of the weekend. It just took so long to get back and forth there wasn’t enough time to do anything else during the day that day. Our seats were in the very last row of the theater but there really weren’t any bad seats and it was just really nice to sit back, relax and watch them perform. The singers were phenomenal. I wish I could sing like that, man!!! After the show we went to a cool pub and had dinner. We were all so tired, but the food was pretty good and pretty cheap. Finally, it was time to go back to the hostel and get some sleep.

Sunday morning we got up, got packed and spent an hour getting into London and then we were getting ready to find our way to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guards. Well…that’s when disaster struck. We were standing at the corner of Buckingham Palace road right in front of Victoria train station. We had literally just gotten off of the bus just trying to figure out direction we needed to go when a guy got hit by a bus RIGHT in front of us. The man was running along the sidewalk right near the curb and tripped somehow. It was exactly the wrong timing because just then, the bus was coming into to the bus stop just ahead of the guy and the man’s legs got caught up in the wheels. I won’t get too graphic because that is not necessary. So, as soon as I saw that I had to turn my head away quickly because I knew I couldn’t handle seeing much more. I started digging for my cell phone to dial 999. My hands were shaking too bad to find anything but Heather and Amy were both ahead of me and made the call. It was so stressful. I was too scared to turn back around and see the full extent of what had happened so I just kept facing the other direction trying to keep my cool, wondering were this darn ambulance was. It took so much longer than in the states. Plus, I got super worried when a motorcycle ‘ambulance’ showed up. I just keep wondering whether that was the only thing that was going to show up or not. Luckily, soon after he arrived, a larger, better ambulance arrived on the scene. After what seemed like an hour, I decided to look and see what was taking so long. To my surprise, the man was standing. How could someone stand after a city bus ran over their legs with TWO sets of wheels?? I am still wondering that. Anyways, the guy had badly wounded his head. He must’ve hit it on the curb or something. BUT, he was alright in the end. By alright I mean alive. I am sure he was in a lot of pain and even though I knew he was okay now, I had convinced myself of something much worse when I was facing the other direction and that incident made me hate London and traveling for a while.

So after the accident we made it to Buckingham Palace in just enough time to miss the changing of the guards by 15 minutes. WOO!! Just our luck! We let Heather and Sarah walk around and get their pictures of Buckingham Palace and then we were quickly off to Hyde Park. I think we all were ready to leave by this point, but we had no option but to wait because our coach didn’t leave until the late afternoon. To be honest I am not exactly sure what we did except walk around wasting time until we could finally get back home!! As soon as we arrived in Leicester it started snowing. This wasn’t a bad thing because EVERYONE gets so excited in England when it snows because it is so rare. In conclusion, it was a crazy weekend and the next two weekends I decided to stay in Leicester and just take it easy….

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Photos

London
Cool fountain we saw on the way to St. Paul's Cathedral

London
Also on our way to St.Paul's cathedral there was this normal building along one of the streets. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then I saw this little sign and I thought that was SO cool!

St.Paul's Cathedral
cool looking birds in the church courtyard

St.Paul's Cathedral
View of London from one of the top domes in St.Paul's cathedral! There is A LOT of construction going in London at this time

St.Paul's Cathedral
Thames River!

St.Paul's Cathedral
Awesome view of London

St.Paul's Cathedral
It's ME!

St.Paul's Cathedral
If you notice, there was actually blue sky that day!

St.Paul's Cathedral
Entrance