Gettin' Our LondON

In honour of our voyage to England, I will be writing (as best I can) in the Queen's English for this update. So, we landed in London on Friday night and had to catch a couple of buses in order to get to our hostel. The hostel, however, was a wee bit rubbish to say the least. The room was barely big enough for the bed, and in terms of comfort, imagine sleeping on a cargo net covered with a sheet. Not so fun, but the trip tired us out and we slept as best we could for the night. The next morn, however, we rose with the sun and embarked for the city. We discovered a FREE walking tour of London, so we joined the queue immediately. Marcel, our guide, took us to all the sights of London, as well as filling us in on its history. Did you know that Big Ben is actually the name of the bell and not the tower itself? Anyway, this tour led us by the Wellington Arche, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and the such. Afterwards, we filled up on some delicious grub. At lunch, we purchased tickets through the same company (NewEurope, take a gander if you're studying abroad) for a Pub Crawl that same night. After a quick shut-eye, we started our Pub Crawl around 8 p.m. which included entry into 5 bars/clubs and a few free drinks. The night was fun, but the English don't quite know how to drink like the Irish. We called it a night around 12:30 and proceeded to our sorry excuse for a room.

On the Lord's Day, Andrew departed us early in the morn, so Tori and I were left to fend for ourselves. We decided to see as many of the museums as possible (free museums, that is). We started off at the National Gallery Museum, but were quickly ushered out due to an emergency evacuation. (We still don't know why). We then headed to the Science Museum for the dork in me, and dabbled in the hands-on Physics experiments. Once done there, we returned to Trafalgar Square to enter to National Gallery and the National Portrait Museums, respectively. We saw works by Picasso and Monet (Including "Water Lily Pond"), as well as many others, in the Gallery. (I also saw plenty of Monet's on the London streets, if you know what I mean) After the Portrait Museum, we grabbed a quick bite to energize ourselves for a long, cold walk back. On the return trip, we stopped by Hyde Park to see the Kensington Palace where Princess Diana lived. Considering we walked throughout the whole day, this was plenty of sites for us in one day, so we went back to our hostel. We packed our rucksacks and basically napped that night having to wake up at 1:45 a.m. to catch our bus to the airport. But we successfully made it to the bus stop on time, despite spending literally all the English pounds we had for a taxi. Despite being totally drained and spending every last dime we had by the end of the weekend, the trips were totally worth it and we had such a blast!

Cheerio,

Alex

P.S. Sorry, I realize the attempt to write in Olde English failed miserably