London's Calling

Me and Mom took a bus to London early Monday morning. The bus station is only about a block from my house, which is really nice. Easy access to all of Europe...


(That blue line is where we walked. The black dot is where we ate dinner, approximately.)

Two and a half hours and many short naps later, We were in Victoria Station in London. First and foremost, we needed some coffee. Mom wanted to go to Starbucks, but I refuse to go to American places while I'm here, so we went to some place called Pret instead. We had some yogurt, which was a lot sharper then American yogurt, and some macchiatos without the steamed milk. We went back up and asked for milk, and apparently they don't have any. What kind of coffee shop doesn't have milk?!?!?

From there we walked to Buckingham Palace, but alas there was no royalty to be seen. We did get to see the Royal Guard though:

And yes, we did get to see the Guards with the big poofy hats, but they were kind of far. There was no "Changing of the Guard" ceremony that day, for some reason - it was cancelled.

Me and Mom in front of Buckingham Palace. The dryers in my building are broken, so I only had one pullover to bring that wasn't soaking wet. So be prepared to see me wearing that sweater all throughout London, Rome, and Paris.

Afterwards we walked through a really nice park over to Big Ben, the Parliament and Westminster Abbey. All of them were quite impressive. We decided to take a "flight" on the London Eye, which is the big Ferris wheel. From there you can get a pretty impressive view of all of London. It takes about a half an hour to do the full thing, so you get plenty of time to take too many pictures, like I did:

Big Ben and Parliament.

After that, it was much more walking. We walked all the way down the River Thames, where there are quite a few famous bridges across. The most popular are London Bridge, which was not falling down, and of course Tower Bridge. But those were at the end of our walk.

After much walking, we took a side stop at St. Paul's Cathedral. I was quite impressed at the time, but I've seen a lot of Churches/Cathedrals/Basilicas on this trip, because they're all over Europe. It makes you realize how much of a part religion played in peoples lives. Oh, and it would have been nice if this guy didn't cut off the top of the cathedral:

We had booked a hostel in London, but we didn't bother going to it. First of all, it was kind of out of the way of where we were going - and also we had to catch our flight at 7, which means we had to be at the airport at 5am, and London Stansted is about an hour outside of London. So that explains why we were carrying our baggage around with us everywhere.

Shortly after the cathedral, we crossed the Thames and went to see Shakespeare's Globe theatre:

To quote the big man himself, "Parting is such sweet sorrow." But alas, we had more in London to see.

We stopped shortly afterwards for sandwiches, to keep us fueled up. We also passed by a prison museum, which looked kind of interesting, but we had to continue on if we wanted to see Tower Bridge in daylight:

After we took a few pictures at the bridge and talked to an Indian couple that were sightseeing as well, we decided to take the metro over to Piccadilly Circus. London has the nicest Metro system I've seen so far. But I think part of that is it costs 4 pounds just for tickets! Also, if you lose your ticket, you can't leave. Maybe.

Piccadilly Circus is the London equivalent of NYC's Times Square, except not nearly as good. We sat around a fountain for a while, so we could nursed our aching feet and watch some big television screens tell us what to buy:

We were pretty hungry again by this point. We found a little pub on a quieter side street that only had a 10 or so minute wait. While we waited, I went downstairs and got a pint. The bartender gave me some advice on his favorite ales, and let me sample a summer ale versus the winter one that I bought. Big difference!

We had a very long meal next to some girls - we were trying to decide for a while what language they were speaking, I'm pretty sure it was Italian. (After my trip to Rome I'm a lot better at identifying Italian.) I ordered the "Toad in the Hole", and my mom got the Steak and Ale pie:

This Toad in the Hole is a big square Yorkshire Pudding (which is kind of like doughy bread), with veggies, mashed potatoes, and most importantly, sausage! Toad in the Hole in general just means sausage in a pudding, but this one was quite good.

Mom's Steak and Ale pie. Who says the British don't know how to cook?

After a long time eating at the pub, we left for an internet cafe for a couple hours, to kill some time before we went to the airport. I should have just posted this then! Afterwards, we took the bus back to Victoria coach station, then we took the bus from there to Stansted, which took forever but I slept most of the time. My mom was worried we wouldn't be able to sit at the airport so long, but it was no problem because there was at least a hundred people sleeping! I joined them shortly afterwards:

And naturally, I slept on the plane to Rome as well. It was a long day though, and I needed to rest up for two days in Rome! I'll post about that and Paris tomorrow probably, because I have to go to Tesco for some groceries, and class soon afterwards.