London 27/5/08

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Today was the day we left for London. Woody had said there might be a possible bus strike, which did not make me very comfortable about getting to the train station. Dr. Scho and Dr. Salsbury had changed which train we were going to take, as we could not check into the hotel until 2. At 8, we went to breakfast and turned in our keys. I was actually rather sad to be moving out of Angela: I really liked it there. (And based on my room now, it was actually better). When we got to the bus stop, we waited for a good twenty minutes for the bus to show up. It never did. We ended up having the guys at the security lodge call cabs for all of us. Ian, Paul, Katie, and I were in the first cab. We got there, had our tickets validated, and got in line for the train. Katie and I were lucky enough to get seats on the train. The train was ridiculously overcrowded. You would think that they would have a bigger train to go to London. At least half of our group did not have seats at some point during the train ride. The scenery during the train was amazing. Katie and I spent a good amount of time just watching the scenery. Our train ended up being delayed, and we didn't end up getting into London until 2. We walked to the hotel, as it was only about a ten minute walk from the train station. We all got checked into the hotel and then proceeded to change rooms. After all of the trading, Sarah and I went to dinner, and then we walked around before taking the tube to our meeting place for the Jack the Ripper Tour. The Jack the Ripper Tour was creepy, but it was also kind of cool. We walked around for a good two hours and saw the market, the doss houses, the pubs where the victims drank, and the murder locations. All but one of the victims were in their 40s to 50s, and all but the youngest victim were murdered outside. Mary, the youngest victim, was twenty-four years old, and was murdered in room 13 of a doss house, where she owed three month's rent. Our tour guide told us plenty of gruesome details, but I do not need to repeat those here. Overall, it was a really awesome tour, and it was a lot of fun to walk around London. After the tour, we were both hungry, so we got some smoothies and went into what we thought was the tube station. It was the train station. After that, we just decided to take a cab back instead of trying to find the tube station, but the cab was expensive....

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