London was the second city on my list of places to see while in Europe. I asked around to see if people wanted to come with me, but people already had other trips planned or they had already been. I had a free place to stay with my friends from Central at the Vandon House and a free flight home courtesy of Ryan Air….well kind of since they still charge tax and other hidden fees – it was still the cheapest way of travel so far. My tickets were less than 70€ roundtrip along with not having to pay for a hostel for three nights, it worked out pretty well.
I knew that a few people would be gone on trips but the person I was going to stay with told me that he forgot that he was going to Wales that weekend – AKA Chris Weaver. So I met a bunch of people from Central that I never really met. I left Granada the day after thanksgiving at 12:30 so I left my house at 9:30AM to catch the 10AM bus, so just the combination of bus rides and waiting in airports made it a long day. It felt like an extremely long day since when I arrived in London, Victoria Station…not the Stansted Airport the sun already had set but 5PM. So it felt like 8 or 9 at night and I was trying to figure out why there were so many people around – Rush hour…Duh. Also I cut off so many people off by going to the right, I completely forgot that in England everyone walks on the left. I had got a Subway since I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and then called Lindsey and she came and found me because Vandon would have been impossible for me to find.
The first night we hung out in Vandon and I got actually eat some real thanksgiving food since they had a bunch of leftovers, and my thanksgiving in Spain consisted of tropical fruits, seafood, and unlimited beer and wine. Theo and Derrick were also visiting for the night so we decided to go bowling in Queens and it was the worst I have ever bowled, the lanes had not been waxed in a long time. Only one person in our group of seven got over 100. After the lanes closed at 11 we walked around for a bit and decided to go to Walkabout, a pretty popular bar in London. It was a pretty cool bar and they played good music, but I have not idea why there would be several people dressed up like it was Halloween. The weirdest costume was probably the guy in the tele-tubby costume. Compared to Spain it was an early night, but it had been a long day of traveling. It was a cool walk home because we just turned a corner and there was Big Ben, it was completely unexpected, and then not to far from that was Westminister Abbey.
I had people take me around to the sights in London and we left Vandon around 11. Buckingham Palace was only a 5 minute walk so we went there first. We got to see part of the changing of the guards, which I have now seen in two countries – the other was in Prague. It was packed so we didn’t stay long and we walked though Hyde and Green Parks and then to Kensington Palace, which is where Princess Diana lived, so we also saw her memorial fountain. A day pass for the Underground cost 5.30 pounds but I got my moneys worth, we used it a ton each day. After lunch, at Pizza Hut we went over to St. Paul’s Cathedral, and I got yelled at for taking pictures in there. The people in front of me were taking pictures with flash, and I never use my flash and I was the one to get called out of a crowd for taking pictures – The only downfall of having a big camera, I guess. We also went across the Millennium Bridge to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, which was cool because it’s an exact replica of the original theatre. We couldn’t see in the theatre because it was the off season but the girls told me about they plays that they went to there and it sounded pretty cool and they had floor seats where it was standing room only and they are really close to the stage as well.
We went back to Vandon for dinner. Thankfully they had leftovers, which also made the trip cheaper. It was interesting to see how other people’s abroad experiences are since we all live all over the city and with host families who cook my meals and in London they all live in a hotel and have to cook for them selves. Many of them said they don’t think they could live with host families abroad, and I wasn’t crazy about it at first when I got to Spain but I never really appreciated it until talking to the people in the London program.
That night we went to a pub, O’Neill’s in Piccadilly Circus, which is kind of like Londons version of Time Square. The pub had three floors and a live band playing and they played cover songs from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Foo Fighters, Greenday, Coldplay and other bands like that. It was really cool. When we got back to Vandon we were making some food and other people were coming back from other pubs. Two girls from Central, Brynn and Kim walked through the kitchen and they both looked at me and had to a double take. They recognized me from Central and they both asked, “What are you doing here?” I told them that I was planning on visiting Chris, Zach and Jordan but they were all gone, but I already had my tickets so I decided to come on my own.
The next morning I planned on going to St. Paul’s for church with Rob and I couldn’t find him but there were some girls going to Westminster Abbey, so I tagged along with them. This was the first church service I had been to since I have been in Europe, but I have been in a bunch of cathedrals on tours in Spain so I hope that somewhat makes up for not going to church for three months. There are grave sites under the floor and just walking to where the mass was held I looked down and saw “Charles Darwin” and thought that was odd that he would be buried in a church especially Westminster Abbey, since he believed in evolution. I’m not used to the Catholic service, so it was cool to be there but kind of boring.
The weather definitely affects people in London, the cold and rain just makes you just want to sleep. I was like a tourist and raring to go and see more sights, and not many people were out of bed until 1 or later. I went with Rob to a Chinese buffet that was pretty close to Vandon and really cheap so when I got back some people were awake so we made plans to leave by 2 and go to Abbey Road. Zach had just got back from Barcelona and came with us to Abbey Road, since he knew how to get there. We had to take our picture just the like Beatles did crossing the cross walk and it was fairly cold so people wanted to go back. Kim said that she would take me a around, since she hadn’t had a chance to walk around London and there were a few things she had not seen yet. So in about five hours I saw: Tower Bridge, Tower of London, HMS Bellfast, London Bridge, Millennium Bridge, the Tate Modern Art Museum, Piccadilly Circus and ate at a Moroccan restaurant there, then Trafalgar Square, walked around the London Eye, Westminster Bridge, Big Ben/parliament and then St. James park near Buckingham Palace.
The Tate Modern Art Museum was free and I really liked it because the only kind of art I have seen is pictures of Jesus and then portraits of royalty in Spain. I was happy to actually see an actual Picasso and Jackson Pollock in front of my face. Even though Pollock was a splatter painter it’s really cool to see how big the piece actually is and how his rhythm of the brush made it flow all together. Then I really liked just looking at the sketches/drawings, photos and sculptures they had. I really like most of the abstract art because it makes you think and you see different things every time you look at it. But they did have some really odd pieces and video artworks, which some pieces didn’t seem like art to me at all. We stayed until close so we were probably there for an hour to an hour and half.Abbey Road
More people were back from their trips when I got back and we could hear Chris coming from about four blocks away because he was singing. He and a few people had gone to Wales for Hassman’s birthday so I got to hear about how crazy that trip was. I got to talk to Jordan briefly because they made enough noise when they got back from Sevilla it woke me up so I had to go pound on his door and he completely forgot that I was going to be in London. So even though my friends I was planning on seeing weren’t there for the weekend it was a great trip and I got to meet a lot of people from Central.
These signs were life savers...literally
I slept on the plane and wanted to siesta when I got back to Granada but I didn’t have much time since lunch would be in an hour or less so I unpacked and then skyped with the parents, and got to hear about the Thanksgiving weekend. That night we had a group movie session that night. I probably saw about five minutes of the Motorcycle Diaries, and I was out, and Ben kept laughing at me because I kept bobbing my head because I was trying not to fall asleep. So this might be like how my trip home will be in a week when I get back to Iowa.
Thankfully, I went the weekend I did because I was thinking about going this past weekend, the first weekend in December. I know of at least two people that got stranded at the Stansted Airport because of protestors at the airport. So my friends missed at least two days of class and sucks since it was the last classes right before finals started. I have less than a week left here in Granada and today has been cold, cloudy and rainy so it gave me a chance to finally write about my trip to London. Hopefully I can write about my trip I had last weekend to Rome and have that up before I leave Spain. See you all in less than a week.
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