We arrived late on Friday night but we were able to walk right to our hostel from the train station. Our hostel was in the Victoria area and it was close to Westminster and a main tube (or how they pronounce it "chube") station. We lucked out with no roommates the first night but the second night we had a very nice lady from Spain stay in our room. She is a teacher and came to England to improve her english. We also had a roommate from Korea but she didn't say much...
On Saturday we walked from our hostel to Westminster and saw the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben,Westminster Abbey, and the London Eye. Then we took the tube to Abbey Road, which we sort of went out of the way for. Apparently the Abbey Road stop isn't THE Abbey Road from the Beatles album cover. We took the tube all the way out to the stop only to find a sign that said "Unfourthneately this is not the right abbey road"...we were dumb tourists but it was funny. It's also funny that we went to the wrong stop in a country that actually speaks our language! When we made it to the real Abbey Road we were going to take the picture at the wrong crossing but luckily a passerby told us where the right cross walk was. There were a bunch of other people trying to recreate the picture from the album cover and the road is still used as a public road so you had to time it out just right so you could cross and take it... It was crazy! I think that if I lived in London I would avoid that road at all costs because people were crossing it every 5 seconds and the drivers would get so mad...it was actually pretty hilarious. And speaking of roads, the term "look both ways before crossing the street" really applies here because they drive on the opposite side of the road than we're used to and it's so confusing! All of the roads have look right and look left written on them so people know which direction cars are coming from..I bet a lot of Americans have close calls with cars in London. After seeing the Abbey Road area we went to Buckingham Palace. The Queen was too busy to have tea with us but I could not imagine being there when the royal wedding happened 2 years ago. I think it's crazy that a Queen is still in England because its a modern day city, and when I think of Queens I think of Disney movie villages.
It started to a get a little colder so we headed back towards our hostel after the palace and we stopped for lunch on the way home at a restaurant called Giraffe. London has all types of food and their only specialty is really fish and chips. Giraffe was a really good restaurant because it had a big variety and unique healthy food like hummus, which I love. I had a chicken sandwich with some type of tomato mayo and avocado and a bunch of other stuff on it and also sweet potato fries! My favorite.. And we all got a drink and I got a cider because I have been craving woodchuck amber from back home. It was really refreshing because we haven't had food like that in forever!
Saturday night we went to a pub down the road from our hostel and we met 3 men ranging from the age of 51-36...not usually our crowd but we ended up talking to them for a long time. They let us practice out British accents for them! On our way home we stopped at a 24 hour grocery store and there were cops in there. We asked them to act like they were arresting us so we could freak out our parents! I hope we didn't jinx ourselves! :/ They were nice though and told us j-walking isn't illegal in England, so there's a fun fact.
On Sunday it was so warm out! We took a double decker bus ride and went to the London Bride, the Tower of London, and Tower Bridge. The area is really up and coming and there were a lot of interning business buildings...which is weird considering their is a palace sitting right next to all of the stainless steel. Then we went to Piccadilly Circus, which is another area of London and it looks like Times Square. There was a Subway, KFC, TGI Fridays, and a McDonalds all on the same street and I felt like we had been teleported back to America for a second. We found a huge souvenir shop so we stayed in there for awhile and then we had lunch at a grill before we headed back to to catch our flight home.
Everything in London was what I thought it would be and more! I loved the buses and telephone booths and referencing everything to Harry Potter. Every time someone talked to me I would get excited because their accents are so awesome! The little kids are the best and I loved listening to them on the tube. One thing that I learned in London is that we do speak different English than them in some ways because our slang is different. Our friends we met at the pub taught us a few sayings, for instance pony means sh!*, so they say "That's a load of pony"...if you say it in your head in a British accent it works.. I think I may bring that word back to America.
For now though, we have to go back to speaking Italian and I'm ok with that. Next weekend were going on a school trip to Pompei, Sorrento, and Capri! Ciao!
Pictures:
1: Just some Harry Potter reference texts between my brother and I...
2: Driving on the opposite side of the road, so weird!
3-6: Typical sites you see while walking around London. I love the cabs!
7-18: This is Westminster area. Here you can see the House of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and the London Eye. Westminster Abbey was so much bigger than I expected and so was the House of Parliament. Big Ben also has a lot more decoration on the top than I thought it would. The picture of the huge building against the water is the House of Parliament from the back side and the picture that looks like a Farris wheel is the London Eye.
19-22: This was the cutest tea shop! If we had time we actually would have had tea and crumpets but we just got some coffee to go (typical Americans) and a free fudge sample, which was a plus.
23: This is the sign we were met with when we first attempted to go the Abbey Road....
24-31: And this is THE Abbey Road and recording studio. We have some funny outtakes if the picture too. The wall with all of the writing is really cool because it shows just how many people have actually been there.
32-39: This is Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace..little disappointed that we didn't see any guards in red coats that refuse to smile...I had some ideas.
40-43: This is Giraffe, the restaurant we ate at..I think the nachos were gone in about 20 seconds.
44-47: This is our night out at the pub and our friends that we talked to for awhile. Unfortunately my mom didn't believe my cop picture...
48-49: More telephone booth pictures (we saw a lot of "for a good time call..." ads in them). I also took a picture riding the double decker bus.
50-51: This is the tube...it's so fast and we almost fell over multiple times. Whenever you get off a loudspeaker voice politely says "please mind the gap", meaning watch out for the gap between the train and the platform...even their loudspeakers are polite.
52-60: This is Queen Victoria's castle and the Tower of London..the castle was built along the water to keep out invaders and the beach by it is only open a few days a year. Tower Bridge was beautiful and also really windy when walking across..you can climb all the way to the top but that's a little too high for me.
61-63: This is Piccadilly Circus. The picture of the Beatles is the inside of the souvenir shop that was nothing but London themed souvenirs. They had some cool stuff so I got a little more than my average postcard..I had to spend my pounds anyway so they were used wisely.
No comments:
Post a Comment