London

This past weekend, i took a short trip over the pond to london. i went with nate travers, emily rueping, and jamie sladkey. we left friday night/evening from gothenburg city airport, which really only had one gate, so it was a very, very small airport. we arrived at london standsted airport, and took about an hour long bus ride into the city. all in we arrived in our hostile at just about 2 in the morning. it had been a long day of travel, but we were excited for the prospect of an exciting weekend. we got "an early start" on saturday, and had a light breakfast before we headed out for a long day. we decided to walk down the river thames and see were that took us. to our surprise, we ended up at victoria tower, the houses of parlament, and big ben! our walk down the river took us thorough victoria gardens, and straight at parlament and victoria tower.

Victoria Tower, Parlament and Big Ben from victoria gardens.

Big Ben lit up at night.

as we continued our walk through london, we wandered into Trafalgar Square, where the British National Gallery is. since all of the public museums in london are free, we decided that we might as well check it out, and we all agreed that it was a good decision. while the collection is free, there is no lack of big name artists. we saw works from van goh, leonardo da vinci , seurat, and michelangelo. some of the works dated back thousands of years to the early centuries. it was very cool to see works that were preserved for thousands of years. after that, the girls went, and payed to get into westminster abbey, while nate and i gave our tired legs a break. however, we still got to go inside the abbey, and at no cost to us! everyday there is a worship service which is free for the public to attend, and although we were not able to see everything that the beautiful church has to offer, we were still able to see the magnificence that is Westminster Abbey. a short ride on the tube, took us to picadilly circus, a shopping center of london. the pace was packed, but we did manage to find some fun stores, such as the M&M store, which was very brightly colored, and had lots of energy too it. we all realized after that how hungry we were getting so we decided to go to a pub, and get some food, which for me was traditional fish and chips, but anything would have tasted good at that point. it was now night, and everything was lit up. we found our way to the other side of the river thames so we could see the houses of parlament from a new perspective. it was gorgeous.

The eye of London, with the houses of
Parlament and Big Ben.

we decided to hit the hay because we knew we had another long day ahead of us. when we woke up, it became apparent to us how much walking we had done the previous day. with that thought in the back of our heads, we decided it would be worth it to take the tube as often as we could, so we bought a day pass early on. but, we started our day off with a short walk to buckingham palace.

Buckingham Palace

The oldest church in London

with the tube day pass in our hands, we hopped on, and took a cross town ride to the british national museum, which contains some of the oldest things that i have ever seen. we started our tour with the roseta stone, and worked our way through egypt, ancient greece, some north american history, some history of europe and ended with japan (where i saw a jar that was from 1300 BC!!). it would be very easy to spend days wandering around the vast exhibits, but our legs could not handle that. we walked around to find lunch, and sat for a long time while our legs recuperated. we hopped back on the tube and went to the most famous department store in the world, harrods. to me it seemed very excessive for a store to be so huge, but part of me thought that it was at least a little cool....but way out of my price range. during the later part of the afternoon, after we took an hour long break in front of st. paul's cathedral and across from millennium bridge, we were walking around, back on the banks of the thames, when we found ourselves at the door of the oldest church in london, from 606 AD. a few more steps, and we were looking at a pirate ship of old. up a flight of stairs and we were on london bridge (which is just another normal bridge) but we were looking at the magnificent tower bridge.

The tower bridge from london bridge

we waited as long as our stomaches could until we ate, because we had a long night ahead of us. our flight didn't leave until 7 in the morning, and we needed to get on a bus to the airport at 3 a.m. so it did not seem worth it spend money on half a night in a hostel. we decided to stay up and wander around the streets of london until we needed to leave, and we all enjoyed it. bue we decided to wait to eat so that we had someplace to "stay" as long as we could. we didn't leave the pub (which was located across the street from big ben, very cool) until around 11 at night. from there it was back to trafalgar square at about 12, and back to buckingham palace, where, to my surprise we were the only people, until about 130. we decided it would be fun to throw a frisbee, mainly for the novelty of it, but none the less. it was a very fun weekend, and i can think of no other way to have seen london than walking around it.

greece is in two weeks! after that is fall break, and soon after that may be the next time you hear from me. i'll try to update after greece, but i might need my one day back to recover for the euro trip. until next time!

p.s. mom, i'm sorry for all of the run-on sentences.