First weekend in London

Horse Guards Parade
Big Ben
Westminster Abby

Kelsie, Me and Sara out to eat

The British Musuem

The Eye of Lodon

Cassie, Sara and Beccah in the taxie on the
way to the play!

The city of London is amazing, it never sleeps!! For a big city it was a lot cleaner than I thought it would be. When you’re on the highway, or carriageway as they call it here in England, there is a lot of trash on the sides of the roads but in the city it is really clean. The air is not very clean however, when you wash your face at the end of the day you can see the dirt on the wash cloth from your face. Anyway, on Friday the 12th we got to London and first went to our hotel The Royal National Hotel, which was in a good location for sight seeing. For the price we paid we would have gotten a lot better room in the States. The hotel room was bare minimum at the most. There were 3 twin beds, no alarm clock, no decorations whats so ever and the TV got "satellite" which amounted to about 5 channels, 3 of witch were BBC channels. One night however we were able to find Harry Potter on the TV. It took us a while to figure out how to turn the TV on because you had to flip on a switch, like a light switch, to turn on the power to the outlet that the TV was plugged into and then turn on the TV. That’s how all the outlets are here, in order to use them you have to turn them on. Once we got settled into our room we walked down to Leicester Square to get 1/2 price tickets for a play that night. I was the navigator and as the British say, and yes I have actually heard one say this, I did smashing job!! (I thought that was just from Austin Powers but I guess not) We only took one wrong turn but it was not that bad because we could still keep going and made it to where we wanted to go. We were hoping to get tickets for Wicked but they were all sold out so we got tickets for Les Miserables, the world's longest running musical. We then ate at a cafe in Leicester square. This is kind of American but Cassie and I split a pizza, but it was homemade pizza and really good. After eating the cafeteria food at Harlaxton, which usually serves British food like fish and chips and other tasteless food, I needed something I knew I would like. Then we went back to the hotel and got ready to go to the Theater. We were going to try and walk back to the theater, which was right by Leicester Square, but we all had high heels on so we got a taxi instead. The theater the play was in was Queens Theater, we were in the upper circle but you could still see every thing. The play was really good the singing was amazing I love there voices!!! After the play we walked around for a bit and then went back to the hotel. On Saturday we took the underground which is the British version of the subway to Notting Hill, or we thought we were taking it to Notting Hill. Apparently half the way to Notting Hill there was construction on the tracks so we had to get off and take the bus the rest of the way. Luckily we had gotten the all days passes for 5.10 pounds that are good on the buses and on the underground. Once we got to Notting Hill we must have really looked like tourist because this older lady walked past us and asked us if we were looking for the Portabella Market, which we were. She pointed us in the right direction. Portabella market was amazing, there were vendors everywhere!!! The street must have been like 3 miles long all full of vendors. There were vendors of antiques, clothing, silver, music, pictures, food and the list goes on. We tried also to find the apartment with the blue door like in Notting Hill the movie but couldn’t find it!! I got a print of a photo of London to frame and hang up once I get home and also a shell and silver necklace. I bartered with the lady that sold me the necklace and got her to reduce the price by 8 pounds. I also got something for my mom but I’m not going to say because she is going to read this, she will just have to wait till I get home. We left the market around noon and went back to the hotel and had peanut butter sandwiches in the room to save on some money. We then went through the walking tour of London. It took us past the British Museum, which we went in for a little over an hour. It was pretty cool; right inside the museum is the reading room. It is a room where some of the worlds’ great literature and such things as Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto were written. I also saw the Rosetta Stone, Egyptian Mummies, friezes from the Parthenon and Roman and Greek statues. We next passed the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery. We are coming back for a British Studies field trip and going to the National Gallery so we did not go in this time. The National Gallery is located in Trafalgar Square where a Russian Winter Festival was going on. I don’t know who was singing some Russian girl band but they really weren’t all that good it sounded like they just were screaming. Anyway next we passed Admiralty Arch. It was built in 1910 to provide an elegant ceremonial passage from the hectic Trafalgar Square towards Buckingham Palace. Next we came to the Horse Guards Parade and #10 Downing Street where the Tony Blair lives. Then we came to the Houses of Parliament which is attached to Big Ben. Big Ben is not the bell tower but the bell itself. Next came Westminster Abbey, it was gorgeous and huge!! At this point my camera decided to die so I only have one picture plus it was getting dark out. But I will be going back and would like to go inside so I’ll take more pictures then. Westminster Abbey is used for Royal weddings and funerals; it is also the burial and memorial place of Queen Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots and also Chaucer, author of the Canterbury Tales. We had a hard time getting to Buckingham Palace because we couldn’t find the road we were supposed to go on to get there. Then when we did get there we didn’t think that Buckingham Palace was Buckingham Palace so we walked right past it. It really is not as impressive as we all thought it would be plus by the time we got there all but two of the guards were gone so we couldn’t even have fun with them. But like I said I’ll be going back and will have plenty of time to have fun with the guards. We then walked back to this Pub we had seen on the way but when we got there we were carded and they wound not accept our WI licenses as proof of our age. They wanted to see our pass ports which we had been told by Harlaxton to leave at Harlaxton. Even though we told them we were college students they didn’t let us in, I mean I guess we do, especially Cassie and, I look like we’re 15! So needless to say we didn’t go into that pub. Instead we found a nice little café by the British Museum and ate there. We then went back to our hotel and got a drink at the bar there. On Sunday we went to Hampton Court Palace. It is a palace of Henry VIII that was built by his minister Cardinal Wolsey. It was later used my William and Mary and at some point gardens were put in to resemble the gardens at Versailles Palace in France. I thought it was really neat and interesting. Overall I really liked London!! Seeing all of the historical buildings was preaty neat next time I want to go into some of them. By far my favorite was probably Big Ben of Westminster Abby.