Lovin' London!

I cannot believe how I have let time get the best of me. It feels just like yesterday that I was getting off the plane in London staring wide eyed and giggling like a little kid at all of the people and their funny accents! Sadly it has been about three weeks since I was in London, but I still remember all of it so everyone else can enjoy in the time I spent there as well!

November 22, 2012

It was Thanksgiving Day when my friends: Rob, Travis, Neda, Ola, and I left Granada around 2:00 pm to head out to London!!! While everyone back home was engorging in turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and other Thanksgiving traditions, we were sitting in the bus station enjoying Bocadillos of ham and sausage and mandarin oranges! We ended up having to take 3 buses a taxi and an airplane to get to our hostel in London; it ended up being a 13 hour trip. Least to say, we were exhausted.

November 23, 2012

This was really our first day in London. We awoke around 8:30 that morning and had breakfast in our hostel. Our hostel, Acacia was in South Kensington. This area was absolutely beautiful. Our hostel looked out onto the National History Museum and was just down the road from Harrods, one of the world’s most famous department stores. We lucked out and were in a really nice neighborhood. The area was very posh and a little expensive for our tastes, but was still neat to see the men and women walking about in their suits and fur coats and driving their Ferrari’s and other luxury sports cars. I have never seen so many different Ferrari’s, BMW’s or Mercedes just parked casually on the street.

Our first activity of the day was to go and visit the National History Museum. This was a pretty neat museum. Not much different from other history museums, lots of bones, stuffed animals and insects and well history! After the history museum we went of in search of the Tube as the Londoners call it, but it was just the city subway system. This was my first time on a subway; I quite enjoyed it. We were riding on the district line. It felt like I was on the Hunger Games, riding the District Line flying buy all of the different stops. Our first stop off of the tube was to go to Trafalgar Square. Right in the middle of the square were these huge lion statues, which everyone was climbing on top of for pictures. We stayed in the square for a while taking pictures then made our way off to find lunch. We happened to stumble across a Chipotle down a cool side street. My meal ended up costing me about 9£ which in our dollars was around $15, that was definitely the most expensive rice and chicken I have ever had from a Chipotle, but it was worth it!

After lunch we went in search of a restaurant that Ola’s mother had worked at when she was our age and touring the world. Along the way there we met a lady who worked at a frozen yogurt place called Snog, and she gave us free samples, it was actually pretty good. We came to find out that the restaurant no longer existed but we were still able to take some pictures of where it used to be in Covent Square. There in Covent Square we shopped around a little. I got to go into a Burberry store, the clothes in there were amazing and a little over what I wanted to pay, one belt would have cost 180£ or $291. After Burberry we went out side to the market place where there was this giant Christmas tree and reindeers. There were also lots of street performers. The neatest part was the Apple Market with home made sweets and drinks and hand made trinkets, as well as a Jamie Oliver restaurant.

Next we took off to go find Big Ben and Parliament. Along the way we stopped along the river and took pictures of the London Eye and the area surrounding it. We didn’t get to go up in the London Eye because it was too expensive. Right across the river from the eye is Big Ben and Parliament. We didn’t go into Parliament cause we were cheap and didn’t feel like paying for it, but instead we took pictures outside of it. Next to Parliament was also Westminster Abby which we took lots of pictures as well. After this stop we went to go see Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately the guards were not out side the gates, so we were not able to have a picture of them. But the palace and the surrounding grounds were beautiful.  The next part of the day was one of my favorites. As we were walking to the tube station we found a mall that had a GAP inside. So while my friends went off for coffee I went shopping lol. I only bought a jacket because things were expensive there, but I did have a good time getting to talk with the manager of the store there.

Once we made it to the tube station we rode up north up into town and stopped at a very special place, Platform 9 ¾. For those of you who do not know Platform 9 ¾ is were Harry Potter and his friends catch the train to Hogwarts! So of course we all had to stop and get a picture. From there we went and spent the rest of our evening in Camden Town, which is similar to a college town. My friends all wanting to have Tai food for dinner, but because I’m rather selective in my cuisine I went to Tennessee Land Chicken and had pizza for dinner. With a name like that I knew I couldn’t go wrong. After dinner we met a friend of Neda’s that goes to school in London and spent the night hanging out with her.

November 24, 2012

            On our second day in London we woke up and had breakfast and we were off to the tube station. We began our morning with trying to find this Harley-Davidson store in London. The Warr’s Harley-Davidson store is the oldest Harley-Davidson store in Europe. This took up a good part of our morning, so by the time we were done there we were ready for lunch. We went and found a small café similar to a Panera on Fleet Street (Sweeny Todd!) and had lunch. After lunch we walked across the Millennium Bridge and went and saw the Tate Modern Museum. This place was really neat. It had a lot of exhibits of sculptures, paintings, videos and interactive art. After the Tate we went next door and saw Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. We then went back across the bridge and saw the outside of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. It had been raining quite a lot that day so we found a quaint little coffee shop and went in and had tea and muffins and dried off for a while. After that back to the tube and off we went to go see the Tower of London and the Tower Bridges. These were two really cool places to see. We arrived there too late in the day to actually go into the Tower of London, but we still had a good time getting to see the outside and taking pictures.

After the Tower of London we went and saw Harrods Department Store. That store was unlike any other store I have ever been in. It was I believe a 6-floor building. The store or giant mall as I like to think of it isn’t set up like ours in the U.S. with a central walk way with stores on both sides. No this department store is one big square. You walk out of one area and you are right in the next. This place had a store/section for everything. There were sections for jewelry, watches, wine, meats, shoes, clothes, sporting equipment, a animal spa, fountain pens, cafes, tea, restaurants, tattoo parlor, Disney store and even an art gallery where the most expensive item was this crystal bull head that was 900,000£ or $1,452,150! This place went all out! After Harrods, we headed back to the hostel and took a nap. Between the rain and the long day of touring we were pretty tired. After our nap we decided to go out and find someplace for dinner in our neighborhood. We figured 10o’clock isn’t to late to head out to dinner. But apparently we were out late for dinner. We had gotten so accustomed to Spain where you go out to dinner around 10 or 11 that we forgot that most people don’t eat that late. But thankfully we found a restaurant that let us come in and we all had burgers and chips for dinner.

November 25, 2012

            This was our last day in London. We did not have too much time to do any site seeing since our flight was leaving at 4. But we did get to ride one of the double-decker buses and ride around town for a bit. Then we stopped off at a café and had coffee and I had a Honeycomb Hot Chocolate while we waited for our bus to take us to the airport. There Neda’s friend and her sister came and had coffee with us before seeing us off. We then headed off to the airport and flew back home to Granada.

            London was an amazing adventure. I absolutely loved the city and the people. They were so friendly and had amazing accents! The way the city ran and functioned was so neat. There is so much history and culture and tourism. There was not a garbage can anywhere to be found on the streets and likewise there was no. It was just a very clean place for a large city. I loved the time I spent there and I hope that someday I can get to come back to London. Even before going I had thought about going to grad school there. Now after visiting London I would love to even more, but we will have to see what God has in store for me!

Now I am sitting here in my room in Granada thinking back on the semester and seeing how I only have 6 more days here. Time has gone by so fast! I will hopefully have one more post for everyone summing up my time here.

           

So until then!

 Nathan