London Town!

Ready for a novel? This will be a long post.

So this weekend I spent in London! Probably one of my favorite cities. I beautiful one with lots of wonderful architecture and history, and the people are great too. We stayed with some friends of Sarah's in a flat in Kensington, which seemed to be this lovely "up and coming" ritzy area of town. I was wonderful, and close to the tube station which was also a plus.

So after we got lost, wandered around the area for an hour or so looking for our place (after a night with MAYBE 3 hours of sleep before our 630 AM flight) we found the place, set our stuff down, and headed off into the city. It was a lovely day. We saw Big Ben and the London Eye. Then we walked ALLLLLLL the way from Big Ben to Tower Bridge. This was a three hour or so trek, but we saw lots of the city. We found a nice little place for free wine tasting so that was a nice little relaxation between legs of our trek. We learned all about tasting wines and what makes a good rose`. The man doing this tasting was incredbly nice and gave us discounts off the wine we bought for gifts for the ladies letting us stay with them. We then continued across the Milenium bridge towards London Bridge and Tower Bridge. Having seen these, it was time for dinner at a lovely little pub back towards the house. Clearly fish and chips was the only this I wanted, and it was delicious!!!

The next day we started out early and made our way to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guards. WE waited around for about 3 hours, but got a prime location right in the front at the gates. I don't remember this being such a big show last time, but there was a full on parade. Music and horses and lots of different guards. It was a lot of fun. They played the Ciricle of Life, which was completely unexpected to me sicne I thought they would play more traditional music. It was cool though. They had the most beautiful horses going to the palace and some lovely ones doing crowd control as well. We met a lovely older man who was so full of history of London, we talked to him while we waited and then he took us around a little bit for our own private little tour. He took us to places we probably would have passed by, like the Prince of Wales' house, what used to be the house of the queen's mother, and a pub called the Red Lion, which is the oldest pub in London (400 years old, perhaps more) where all the guards used to go after they were done with their shifts. It was really cool so we decided we had to have a pint in there. We continued walking and ran into Picadilly Arcade and another arcade and we window shopped at all the jewelry and fancy stores that we clearly couldn't afford. It was really nice.

We continued to the British Museum after that. This is probably one of my favorite museums. You could spend days in there easily. There is so much so see and do! The first time I went, I didn't spend nearly as much time there as I would've liked. This time, I spent more time there, but still didn't see all of it! After a few hours of museum time (and finding MK time hahaha) we headed back to Kensington for a lovely homey Italian dinner.

Then we headed back home to get ready to go out (it was at this point about 103o pm) because Christine wanted to see a friend that was in London. So we got ready and headed back into the city (got there at 1215 ish) and found her friend. We decided that we'd just get a taxi back home since the tube stopped running at 1. Bad decision number one. So we go to this little dance club and have a good time for a few hours and then decide its time we head back so we can at least get a few hours of sleep. We leave and start heading towards a tube station hoping to grab at taxi. First off, I've never seen so many drunk stumbling people on the streets in my life. Second, getting a taxi in London at night is incredibly difficult. None of the "stick your hand out to hail a taxi" stuff. We tried that and got yelled at. SO we put our names in at a taxi service finally, after they sent us around the block about three times. As we're about to get into the taxi and getting yelled at by a crazy man running the taxi service we learn instead of the 15 pound rate we were told by a driver it would be 20 pounds...this wouldn't have bothered me much, but my friends said no, so out we go. We waited around a little longer and realized that we weren't going to get a taxi for less than 20 pounds. We wandered off to try to find another place. This was getting us no where and everyone was frustrated, tired, and cold (never a good combination at now 230-3 am). We walked and walked and walked and walked asking along the way taxi services how much it would cost to take us home...the further we walked the more expensive it got....FINALLLYYYYYYYY after about an hour of wandering the streets of London we found a bus station. Now, during the previous two days, we hadn't been able to ride one of the double decker buses becuase we took the tube everywhere. But now we did, so that was about the only good thing to come from walking. We walked one hell of a way though... From Leicester Square to Picadilly Circus...That's quite far. FINALLY we returned home, and felt horrible that we got in a such an absurd hour, at 330 am. Our taxi was coming to pick us up at 415. This was just the right amount of time to pack our stuff, write a letter of thank you and apology to the girls, and sit for about five minutes.

Then it was off the the bus station, and the airport, and then home. We didn't get much sleep in the past 24-48 hours, but it was completely worth it. Lots of adventures, lots of fun, lots of cool pictures. All together, a highly successful and WONDERFUL trip to London.

One day I'll live there. I'm not much of a city person, but for London I could make an exception!