For those of you who don’t know her, Alicia is my college roommate and travel buddy. I met her in San Francisco (she is from the East Bay area northern CA) and together we flew to London for a pre-school (English) adventure.
We landed around 9 pm UK time in snowy London. After almost 18 hours of flying we couldn’t get off the plane and had to wait another hour and a half due to weather conditions. Going through customs took double the time, and than some. By 1:00 pm we were still waiting to pass through customs, had missed the tube (London's underground subway) and had no way of contacting our hostel. Such a mess and we were tired. 2 American girls with 4 luggage items each = a struggle for us and annoyed Brits. A 45-minute night bus ride (which we didn't pay for due to our lack of cultural knowledge) and taxi ride (which we paid WAY too much for because of same thing) later, we made it to our hostel around 3 and in bed around 4:30. I forgot the simplicity of International travel…
The next morning Alicia and I didn't waste time sleeping in, and got up early to explore the city. It was covered in snow and we were surprised to see locals running in short shorts through Hyde Park. We ended up window-shopping around and visited Harrods - the world’s biggest department store - than stopped at a local market/grocery store to pick up a cheap dinner. Later on we walked to a local pub recommended by the kids at our hostel for a drink (Alicia is legal here, very exciting : ) )
At The King’s Head (pub) we ended up chatting the night away over wine and strawberry beer with our new British friend, John who is much older but found our company quite entertaining. He was house/cat sitting for some friends at a flat next door and invited us over to meet the cats and hang out for a while longer. The flat was quaint and the cats' names were "Chicken and Noodles" or Chic and Noody, cute right!? John's friends weren't paying him money to watch the cats but instead “paying” him in wine meaning he was free to drink as much wine as he wanted from their cellar. So he opened a bottle there and we ended up chatting until Alicia fell asleep on the table - At that point we decided we should go back to our hostel because it had been a late first night and Danielle (my other college roommate from Chapman who is studying in London this spring semester) was arriving the next day!
The next morning was rough. Jet lag was definitely starting to kick in and Al and I were both running on empty (sleep [this continued to be a pattern all week but we got over it]). Luckily the hotel we had booked was only several blocks down the street! We were able to transport ourselves + our luggage (not easily but cheaply!) to the hotel where we met Danielle.
The three of us finally together, got busy. Daily adventures consisted of a FREE (donations appreciated obviously) guided tour of London from a hilarious and plump Scottish woman Eliza. We saw Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey, Parliment and Big Ben. We also paid a visit to the natural history museum which was HUGE, the tower of London (saved some $$$ by not going inside unfortunately), the Tower Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral, Shakespeares globe theater, Abbey Road (to take a Beatles reenactment photo) and of course Kings Cross Train Station to see Harry Potter's platform 9 & 3/4.
Of course we went out at night, in fact we went out every night and it was a fabulous time every time. We learned the tube/underground system quite well and also met some nice Australian boys who were our age. On the last night Richard and Jack (Australian friends) had left for Amsterdam so us girls went to see the show “We Will Rock You” a musical featuring music by QUEEN. We dressed up and had some wine in the hotel room before leaving the for
show, and there we bought popcorn sang along the whole time. "We Will Rock You" was a fabulous choice and the music/dancing/atmosphere was incredible, the perfect end to our trip. The next morning Alicia and I took the Gatewick Express train to the Gatewick airport for our flight to Madrid. London was amazing and I do miss it. And Danielle. And occasionally the familiar English speaking citizens… But overall besides handling the big freeze I’d say between meeting lots of new friends and seeing as much as we did for such a cheap price we couldn’t have done better! XX
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