Fantastic London!

I'll now attempt to capture the entire essence of my fun-filled week in London, though I'm sure I'll find it an impossible task...

The first night I arrived was rather uneventful, except I saw Robin!!! However, the weather was less than enjoyable so we spent our time in the hostel doing my laundry and trying a pint at the pub around the corner.

The next day I joined Robin and her class at Hampton Court for a tour of the palace. The infamous Henry XIII had lived there and it was later added to by William... II? Some rich King that wanted to be extravagant of course... After a tour of the kitchens, the chapel, Henry's Great Hall, and William's half of the palace we got to explore the glorious Palace grounds, the garden! It was such a beautiful day, and there were even some flowers in bloom. There were swans on a giant lake, and beautiful landscaping. I only wish the statues hadn't been wrapped in white plastic. We also saw the world's largest grape vine! And I giant wisteria that I took a picture of for mom :) Unfortunately there were no flowers on it yet. Then we walked around to the gardens on the opposite side of the palace and did the most famous maze in the world! It wasn't actually very big, I think originally it was larger, but we certainly got frustrated enough before finally making our way to the center! After the maze we were ready to leave the Palace and head back into downtown London. We took the train back and then hopped on the tube and when we got off Big Ben was RIGHT THERE. Some old ladies wanted me to take their picture but they were standing right in front of Big Ben so it was impossible to get them and all of Big Ben in the picture, but they didn't speak English so I couldn't really explain it to them... oh well, I hope it turned out okay enough. Then we walked around that area and saw the Queen's Gate, which the Queen is only allowed to enter and she only uses once a year... (silly England) Then we saw the outside of Westminster Abbey, but didn't want to pay a ridiculous amount to get inside... Heading back to the tube station we saw a ticket booth for musicals and my friends from the Strasbourg trip that were also in London for the week had told me they were going to Lion King so I bought a ticket for the show that night. Then we had to head over to Covent Garden right away to pick up the tickets because they only reserved them where we were, you had to pick up the physical tickets somewhere else... then once I got my tickets I ran out of credit on my phone so I spent the next couple hours wondering around Covent Garden trying to get credit on my phone and waiting for the show to start. Eventually I just headed over to the theater and took my seat.
The show was AMAZING! The costumes and puppets and scenery and everything was just incredible. The script actually followed the Disney movie really closely, though there were a couple new songs, one which was really cheesy and lame, and another which was really good and I wish I had on my itunes. I met up with Maia and Yan (the girls from the Strasbourg trip that were also in London) at intermission and planned to meet up the next day since my phone wasn't working to call them. After the show we were too tired to do anything else so we went our seperate ways.

The next morning I met Maia at the British Museum. That place is HUGE! First thing we saw was the Rossetta Stone! That's pretty cool to see in real life. Then we wandered amongst giant Egyptian statues for a while, and saw some mummies. I'm sure we saw a lot more, but I don't remember it all right now. You can see it in my facebook photos. Yan was going to meet up with us but by the time she got there we were ready to leave. Then we decided we should hit up some Indian Food place since it's apparently the National Food of London right now. So we had a delicious Indian lunch, though it ended up being a bit more expensive than we expected...
After lunch we met up with Robin and went to Abbey Road! That was really cool to see. The wall in front of the recording studio is covered with writing and drawings from Beatles fans.
After Abbey Road Robin took us to Westminster Chapel, which is in a totally different place than Westminster Abbey, I have no idea why... But it was one of the most amazing churches I've ever seen! Parts of the ceiling are covered in beautiful tile mosaics, some with real gold tiles. They're trying to raise enough money to cover the entire ceiling of the chapel with these mosaics... good luck! There was also a choir singing some Gregorian chants or something while we were there. Very beautiful.
After the chapel we saw a theater for Wicked, which I've wanted to see for a long time, so we headed to the ticket booth to see if we could get some tickets for a reasonable price, and we did! We got to sit front and center too! It was an amazing show, and reminded me of a couple friends back in highschool who were always singing songs from Wicked :)
Exhausted after another whirlwind day of fun in London, we headed back to our beds after the show.

The next day was probably the busiest yet. I woke up and went to try to find the Dickens' House Museum but got distracted by a souvenir shop. After taking my purchases back to the hostel I headed out again, but never found the Dickens House Museum... I did find a cute little church called St.-Giles-in the field or something like that... where I found a little brown church mouse and shared a snack with him. I named him Albert. Then Robin called me so I met up with her at St. James Park and we headed over to Buckingham Palace. The changing of the guard wasn't happening that morning so we decided to come back again the next day to watch it. We walked over to Trafalgar square and had some lunch then went and looked around in the National Gallery. I liked seeing William Turner's paintings, because when I was studying Debussy I learned that Debussy was really inspired by Turner's work.
After the Gallery we caught a double-decker bus over to the south bank. We saw the London Eye and walked all along the south bank to the Tate Modern. On the way we saw street performers and a skate park. Once at the Tate Modern we only looked around at two big exhibits because our feet hurt terribly. I saw some Jackson Pollock paintings and Picassos. After that I was begging Robin to get back on the tube so we could sit down. We decided to go back to her house and make some dinner.
So we headed across the Millenium Bridge to get on the other side of the river. We passed by St. Paul's where the lady sings "Feed the Birds" in Mary Poppin's. Finally we got on the tube and headed to Robin's house. From there we walked to a cheap supermarket and bought some microwave dinners, and candy, which I think I left at my hostel :( After eating and resting my feet a bit I headed back to the hostel to get some sleep.

The next day we got up bright and early because we had a lot of things planned. First we went to Portabello Road, which has a lot of outdoor vendors. I got some scarves and a big bag because I needed another bag to take things back home with me. But we didn't stay very long because we wanted to get to the changing of the guards! So we hopped back on the tube to Buckingham Palace. There were TONS of people but we managed to squeeze our way up to the gate to get a better view. Mostly all we could see was the marching band though. And they played songs by Enrique Iglesias, Ricky Marting, and The Beatles, which was really strange...
Of course no London tourist experience is complete without platform 9 3/4 so we went to Kings Cross to get that photo op taken care of.
It was a reasonably nice day so we went for a walk around Hyde Park. There were a bunch of people rollerskating on the road through the park and doing some pretty cool tricks. After walking the entire length of the park and back our feet were hurting again so we hopped a doubledecker again and headed to Harrod's, the giant famous shopping mall in London. I don't think I would have wanted to do any shopping there but it was pretty interesting to see. We decided to get some afternoon tea, since we were in England after all. I got a Darjeeling tea with a delicious raspberry pastry with a rose petal on top. It was absolutely scrumptious! Though the rose petal didn't really taste that good...
We had finally run out of ideas of what to do and our feet were killing us so we just went back to the hostel for a few hours till dinner time. For dinner I had to have some Fish & Chips so we went back to the pub around the corner from the hostel. Their fish & chips were pretty tasty! Then Robin and her friend, Heather's, friend called them asking if we wanted to go see Watchmen so we decided to go with them. I thought Watchmen was pretty good, there were some pretty bad scenes, but overall a pretty good movie. Robin's friend hated it though. Whatever. Robin and Heather live a ways out from downtown so they had to catch a bus after the movie so I went back to my hostel.

The next day I slept in (YAY!) and then grabbed a sandwich and ate lunch in Russell Square, about a block (if that even) away from my hostel. I watched little kids play in the fountain and wrote in my journal a bit. Then it got windy and a tree branch almost fell in my lap so I decided to get out of there... I took the tube to Camden Market to meet Robin. It was beautiful and sunny when I got there but as I was waiting it started pouring rain so I found a Starbucks and sat there eating cake until I heard from Robin. We decided to brave the weather a bit so we could look around Camden Market. We ended up running from stall to stall trying to stay dry. I ended up buying a jacket because it was cute and cheap and I needed something a bit more fashionable since I hadn't brought my peacoat with me.
We eventually got fed up with the thunder and rain so we headed back into the tube station. Robin wasn't feeling well so she headed home and I decided to check out the Victoria & Albert Museum. It ended up being one of my most favorite museums. There were such a wide variety of exhibits, unfortunately I didn't have time to see them all. My favorite was the sculpture gallery. I took some pictures of my favorites you can see on my facebook. I also liked the fashion and jewelry exhibits. I wanted to see the glass works but they were closing by the time I figured out how to get there.
By then all the other museums were closing as well so I went back to my hostel to get dinner. Robin still wasn't feeling well so I just went to the grocery store and got some cheap sushi. And some breakfast for the next morning, which I also forgot at my hostel... The rest of the evening was pretty laid back. I ate some sushi and ended up playing Blackjack and hanging out with two guys from San Francisco and Los Angeles who had just gotten to London. We hung out around London for a little while because my taxi was coming at 3:30am and I figured going to bed was kind of pointless.
Once we got back to the hostel they waited with me till my taxi came and then began my heinous journey home.
I hadn't slept in 30 hours, my train left at 4:30 am and I didn't get back to Strasbourg until 5 pm that evening... over 24 hours of waiting and catching trains and busses and flights and eating airport food because I left my delicious bagel and OJ somewhere... ugh.

But I made it back safe and sound and here I am!
This week wasn't too eventful, just classes mostly. I did meet with a girl, Coline, who is learning English and did some conversation exchange. We have a lot in common so that was pretty fun. Besides that, I got sick and slept all weekend and watched some rugby in which all the teams I was rooting for lost... I need to get out today because I'm getting kind of homesick. I'll let you know how it goes!