Last weekend, we took a trip to the U.K. and stayed in London for a long weekend. From the moment we arrived in London on Thursday, I knew that I was going to love that city. Thursday evening we had time to explore the city a little bit before our group tour the next day. Our Bus2alps guide (Dean, who was born and raised in the U.K.) showed us the city around the London Bridge and took us to get fish and chips, the one thing that I had been anxiously awaiting for since we planned the trip! We walked through the markets and over into the Financial District. On the way back to our hostel, we stopped to gaze out over the Thames; we saw Tower Bridge, along with various landmarks in and around the river. Our guide pointed out the WWII naval ship that has been anchored in the river since the war and has been preserved and turned into a museum. After a long day of traveling, we decided to relax at the hostel and try out a few different kinds of British beer. One interesting fact that our guide told us that in London, there is one camera for every seven people and it is considered to be one of the "most watched" cities in the world. On a side note, another fun fact that Dean shared with us is that he can always spot an American because a.) we overuse the word "awesome" to describe things and b.) we say "omg that's so funny" all the time and then don't laugh...both of which I got a good laugh out of because I find myself doing the same things. After an evening full of good conversation and laughter, we called it a night fairly early to rest up for the next couple days!
The next morning we got an early start and headed out for our tour of London. We started near Buckingham Palace and learned various bits of information about the United Kingdom's past monarchs. One of the stories that I specifically remember was that Queen Victoria had seven assassination attempts against her life during her reign (talk about a marked woman!) We strolled past Buckingham and watched Queen Elizabeth's soldiers parade around her palace. We continued on our tour and viewed the changing of the guards, then saw St. James's Palace as well. We learned that this palace in particular has so many chimneys because in the past, having many heat sources was a sign that you had a lot of money, and the King at the time wanted to show off his riches. We ended the tour by walking through the remainder of the touristic sections of the city. I was able to see Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, and even saw a statue of Abraham Lincoln!
After our tour finished, we went for lunch at a local pub to warm up because the weather was quite cold in London! Our group did the London Eye tour (the structure that looks like a ferris wheel) later that afternoon. It was money well spent, as we were able to have the best view over the entire city.
That night we went to Harrod's... my bank account's worst nightmare. Although I didn't buy anything, which was probably for the best, it was still so cool to walk through the six story building of hundreds of designers. Even later that night, we went out on the town to experience some of the nightlight in London.
The following day, we went to several different markets. We went to Portobello Market, Camden Market, and even stopped at the Victoria's Secret in London, where most of the outfits from the VS fashion show are kept. For lunch that day, we went to an Italian restaurant; I had amazing red wine and incredible homemade Italian pizza--so delicious! We went out again that night after a big day of shopping and experienced a true London pub crawl. Although catching a cab at the end of the night was so difficult, we had such a fun evening with great friends.
On Sunday, we had to prepare to head back to Sevilla, but we wanted to enjoy the last few hours that we had in London. Katie and I went to Abbey Road and took pictures like the Beatles on the cover of their 1969 album. After that we went shopping for a couple hours and got our last fix of fish and chips. Our last store was at Primark which was the most incredible store we've encountered in all of Europe because everything was of very good quality for great prices. We bought so much stuff that we had to buy another suitcase so we could transport all of our purchases back to Sevilla.
We were sad to leave London, but it was so nice to come back to the warm weather in Spain. The United Kingdom was an amazing place to visit that reminded me so much of home, not only to hear English again and the British accents were just an added bonus, but I didn't miss the freezing cold weather. Keep watch for my next adventure to Belgium!
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