London Tour Part 2

Walked past the Tower of London, but again, they wanted an arm, a leg, or a head, for entry. Though, this green area around the tower used to be a moat! And on the left is Tower Bridge as we walked across it. Lower left is another view of the Thames festival from across the river.

    

    

We were dropped off for lunch at Covet Gardens(above right). It was a great array of shops, food, people and street performers. After a delicious sandwich and tomato soup we walked down to Trafalgar square.

      

There were no pictures allowed but we did also wander through the free galleries at the Tate Modern. Which were very cool, if not a little too modern for my enjoyment.

      

London Bridge opening. More street performers and a beautiful covered plaza at the Thames festival, and Millenium bridge (aka: the one in the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

And, speaking of Harry Potter, I of course had to make it down to Platform 9 3/4. Finding it was tough though. We followed the book's directions, but to start with there is no pedestrian area between platforms 9 and 10. Secondly, there is a lot of construction currently going on those platforms. So, I finally found someone to point me in the right direction, ignoring Brian & Jess telling me to give up. But, sadly, it's located off of platform 8.

    

Then there's also the super steep escalators of the tube stations. And a beautiful gate: I don't know what it is about Europe but they have unicorns everywhere.

    

So London was great! ALL of the pictures I took while there can be found on Facebook, or through this link if you don't have a facebook: http://bit.ly/daDfWh
*photo of my taken by Jess

London Tour Part 1

Our full day in London started with an early wake up so we could have a bus tour of the whole city.

We started in much more posh neighborhoods, where prices were a million pounds and up. They were beautiful but kinda discouraging to the vague idea I've always had of picking up everything and moving to London. We, of course, visited some of the more notable destinations:

Buckingham Palace. And the great thing is because the Union Jack is flying above the palace it means that the queen was not at home. So the palace was open for touring but it cost an arm and a leg to get in, so we just got the view from the outside. The bad thing about the queen being gone is that the full glory of the changing of the guards didn't happen.

              

  Westminster Abby. And below, The Clock Tower, which houses the bell, Big Ben. As well as a super cute yellow car!

Next: St. Paul's Cathedral (from the bus), The Globe Theater across the river from the millenium bridge, Jess & Brian, the Thames festival!

     

    

This was something really neat that we got to experience. The Thames festival was going on so all along the Thames there were booths with merchants, music, food, and activities. It was such a cool part of London culture we got to see.

Backtracking: London

My trip began last Thursday so early in the morning. My flight left Boise at 6:40ish am, and I finally arrived in London the next day around 1pm. Most of that trip was boring. A lot of sleeping. On my international flight I got to watch Iron Man 2, finally, as well as Letters to Juliet. I got to wander around the area our hotel was in for a few hours then, cause our rooms weren’t ready yet. That night we had a meet and greet with everyone on the trip and then all broke apart to get food. I ended up with a few others at an Italian restaurant just down the road. We then headed to Piccadilly Circus for a night out on the town. While others headed to a club we ended up wandering into a giant Irish pub. It was great. Not oh too packed, and the music selection was ridiculous. Within a half hour I have happily sung along to MC Hammer, The Killers, and Bon Jovi. Luckily we called it an early night so we could catch the last subway home.

And here's the messed up contents of my main suitcase. For an entire semester, I think I did pretty good at packing light.