London

I went to London last weekend and it was a BLAST! We left Lille on a bus at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday. We were supposed to leave at 6:30 but the French are always always late. So we stood outside waiting for the buses almost an hour. We were lucky it wasn't too cold. The night before (on Friday) Lauren and I went out with a woman I met while getting my Visa in D.C. She met us at one of our favorite bars, then we walked to meet her husband in old Lille. It's a bit of a walk and I was wearing heels...so my feet are covered in blisters which I had to deal with all weekend in London and am still recovering. Anyhow, we had to take the underwater chunnel to England. It was pretty neat. I thought it was just a tunnel that we drove through but that's no the case. The bus pulled into this large compartment...almost like pulling into a big train car. Then we parked. So you don't actually drive...you just sit there and the big thing you are in is what moves through the tunnel.

On the bus, on the way to our hostel, I got a glimpse of the London Eye and Big Ben - but that was it. It was exhilarating to peak through the tall buildings and see something like Big Ben that I've only seen pictures of. To see it in person is so very neat. When we got to our hostel, we couldn't sign in yet. They gave us ("us" being two bus loads of students that went on the trip) a room to put our luggage in...the students in charge locked it up and told us to come back around 7 to get our rooms and stuff. So we set off...not really knowing where we were, no map, no pounds. Lauren and I were with a group of students and one girl had a boyfriend who was working in London. We went with that group because we thought they would know what they were doing - but being in such a large group (of about 10 people) just wasted our time. We finally made it to an underground station (that's what they call the metro) and bought tickets. We got all day pass ticket for about 5 pounds which is more or less $10. We got on the crowded tube and headed toward Big Ben. As we walked down the streets I couldn't keep my eyes off of all the new sights. The cars were more similar to American cars than they are here in Lille. They have the cutest taxi cabs that look so British and fit perfectly with the big red phone booths that are everywhere. The big red double decker buses were neat to see in person too. They are EVERYWHERE. I wanted to take one, but bus tours are expensive and long...and we didn't really know how the bus system worked. I started taking a lot of pictures on the way to Big Ben - then I realized my battery was low on my camera. UGH! Who goes to London with a low battery and no charger?! I was so mad at myself. So I would take one picture and turn my camera off.

There were tons and tons of people at Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and at the Pariament building and all that. I'm sure a lot of it had to do with how nice it was out. It wasn't that cold and the sky was blue. We got really really lucky. It wasn't until we were walking around for probably an hour that I noticed the cars and how they are on the other side of the road, and how the drivers are on the other side of the car too! It gets really confusing when you are crossing the street. I couldn't figure out which way to look until I realized that on every crosswalk, painted on the road just beyond the curb, they had an arrow and a "Look Right" or a "Look Left." It was so helpful! I didn't get used to it the entire trip though - and then when I got back to Lille I was looking the wrong way!! I was so confused that I almost got hit by the buses a few times haha. Anyways, we hung out all day around the London Eye and Big Ben. Lauren, Kayla, and I ended up losing the rest of the group because Lauren is quite the photographer and she stops every 2 seconds for a photo op. I always wait for her, and Kayla waits for me - so we ended up alone which was fine. So there were a bunch of people putting on little shows along the walkway by the river. There were magic tricks, mimes, people doing balancing acts, etc. There was some music that caught our ears so we went over the check it out. It was a group of break dancers - 5 or 6 guys that were about to put on another show. Well we got right up front and yelled and clapped along to the whole charade. The very last guy to guy was about to do headspins until the spokesman stopped him. He asked the crowd how many headspins we thought he could do. Someone yelled out 5, and Lauren yelled out 20. He came over to our part of the crowd and asked who yelled 20 - I raised my hand and said "I did!!" He pulled me out of the crowd into the middle and was teasing me in front of everyone. They said I had to wrestle the guy for some reason (I forget). I dropped my purse and took my wrestling stance that Hadley taught me and told them I was going to win because my boyfriend is a really good wrestler! He looked scared :o) So they changed it to arm wrestling. We made a quick bet in front of everyone and began to arm wrestle on the groud. With a little help from another one of the group members I won!! BUT, they tricked me! They said, "If you win, you have to do the headspins. If he wins, he'll do the spins." Haha, I wasn't sure what to do at that point because I definetely can't stand on my head and spin. SO...they put a helmet on me, made me do a head stand, and then two of the guys grabbed my legs and started spinning me around until the crowd counted out five. It was pretty funny! But to end the story, the dancer guy did end up doing 20 headspins. It was very impressive.

After that, the sun was starting to go down, so the three of us went into a cafe on the waterfront and got some warm drinks while we watched the sun go down behind Big Ben. It was really amazing. When we were done, we still had lots of time before we needed to be back at the hostel to get our keys. So we found the closest underground stop and headed to Buckingham Palace. It was dark when we got there, but it was really neat to see and still beautiful. Afterwards, we went to the hostel and dropped off our stuff. We were going to wait for the rest of our roommates to get there since we lost them earlier...so the three of us layed on our beds and ended up napping for an hour because we were so exhausted from everything. Once we finally got up, we decided to eat somewhere close because I could barely walk. My blisters/feet were killllllling me. So we went to this small italian restaurant that was close by and it was soooooo good! I got pasta with some amazing sauce, avocados, and salmon. MMMMM! The only thing was that it was 11 pounds. Everything was so expensive! My night ended shortly after that when we stopped at a bar and I stayed for about a half hour then went home. I had to sleep.

My first experience in a hostel was pretty good! It was HUGE! We had a room with 10 beds in it...but they were comfy and the blankets and pillows were really nice. I slept way better there than I do in my room here at school. Our room (all of my roomies were on the same trip as me) shared a bathroom and a mixed gender shower room with another room of about 10 beds...who weren't on our trip and I didn't know. It's so weird walking into a bathroom and a guy is standing there washing his hands. That happens all the time to me here in Europe and I don't think I'll ever get used to it. Anyways, we ate breakfast the next day at the hostel because it was free. There was toast with butter and jam, and cereal and oats. I had no idea how big the hostel was until then. There were SO many people trying to get breakfast. We sat with a guy from Scotland who was really nice and helped us plan our day.

So we got ready and went to the underground and bought another all day pass. It was raining...and it continued to rain pretty much all day. We went to St. Pauls Cathedral and it was beautiful! BUT, it was Sunday so we couldn't take pictures or anything like that. Atleast I got to see it though! After that, we went across to the other side of the river and went to the Tate Museum of Modern Art. It was ok. I've been to a couple modern art museums in NYC and they blew the Tate away. It was nice to get out of the cold and rain though. Next, we walked along the river to the London Bridge and took lots of goofy pictures. We ate lunch at this cute little pub thing near the river. Lauren and I just had to get fish and chips. :o) Then we went to the Tower of London. We didn't go in because we didn't want to pay any money...but we saw the outside and took lots of pictures there too. When we got done with that, we had about 1.5 hours until we had to be back at the hostel to leave so we went to get some desert and hot chocolate. We sat around there for a while because we thought we had all kinds of time. Well it turned out that the underground station right beside the restaurant wasn't running that day - oh yeah! I forgot to mention that about every line we needed to be working last weekend was closed down. And all of the stops right next to the sights we wanted to see were closed too. It was so frustrating!! Anyhow, we had to find the next closest tube stop and fast. We got a little lost but finally found it and made it back in time to get on the bus and go home. We waited to get on the chunnel for seriously like over 2 hours so it took forever to get home. We got back to Lille at about 1 in the morning and I'm still exhausted from all of it!

I can't wait until Hadley comes to visit me and I can take him there! :o)