London Trip

Kristen and I in front of the Tower Bridge
A picture from within the Tower walls.
The London Eye AND a double decker bus, because I'm just that good, haha! I can't wait to ride that!

Kristen and I in front of Buckingham Palace, note the guards in the background!
Me in front of Westminster Abbey

Kristen and I in front of Big Ben
Shakespeares Globe Theatre

The snowman that people decided to build outside my window, while throwing snowballs at my window!
View from second landing in my flat. So many people were out in the snow. Most snow they've had since 2000
The parking lot, haha... it was so funny.

So it ended up snowing here on Thursday and it's the most snow they've had since 2000. So it was a pretty big deal. So of course lessons were shortened or cancelled and mine ended up being cancelled Thursday night and then all lessons were cancelled for Friday and Saturday. So right before I ran off to class (this was of course before I realized it would be cancelled) a few of us were like we should go to London. There was some definite enthusiasm in that and when I came back 15 minutes later, Dan was looking up train tickets, Kristen was packing and Fridg (also known as Jonathon) was packing too. So Dan bought the train tickets and we realized we had about 5 minutes maximum to pack and get to the train station before it closed at 7 p.m. Yeah... so I ran down the stairs packed whatever I thought was necessary, this was a completely spontaneous trip can you tell, lol, then we ran to the station. Well Fridg and Dan ran, Kristen and I walked fast. Our train didn't actually leave until 7:58 so we were okay we just had to make it there to pick up our tickets or we were going to be in big trouble. But we made it in plenty of time even those of us who walked quickly! So we went to a pub around the corner and had a sit for a bit just thinking about what we had just done. We really couldn't believe that we were going to be going to London and that we had literally decided this in the matter of a minute or two and then just did it. It's not something that I would normally see myself doing, but I have been looking forward to London for so long! Our plan was to go into London Thursday night, stay in a hostels, get up early Friday morning walk around London all day, have dinner with a family that Fridg knows, then catch the train home that night. Well things didn't exactly work out that way but I'll get to that.

We got onto our first train here at Worcester and then headed towards London Paddington or at least that's where we thought we were going, because of inclement weather we ended up going a different route and wound up in London Waterloo, which was fine because we were able to take the tube to where we needed to be for the hostels. We got to the hostel about midnight and checked in and headed to our room... and contrary to what one might think.. it wasn't that awful. I mean it wasn't a 4 star hotel, but that's not what you're paying for either. At any rate, we went in and just passed out we were so tired from traveling and wanted to get up nice and early and have a good start to the day. So we went to bed, woke up early to take showers, which was an interesting task because the shower that Dan had used the night before had apparently been nicer than the ones that Kristen and I used in the morning, lol. Oh well, it got us clean! We had a light breakfast... aka, toast. Then began our trip out into London. I must admit I was quite excited since it was my first time there. It was their 2 time in, but they were still just as excited... of course I did end up takin 116 photo's. Which I will not post all of them here, but I will post some of them on here, just so you can see how gorgeous it was. We walked through Hyde Park, saw Buckingham Palace and there was definitely something going on too, because the Royal Flag was flying and there was a line of cars waiting to get into the palace and the Royal Police were on their hands and knees checking the cars for anything suspicious. We never did fin out what it was though. At any rate we saw Big Ben, which is actually just the name of the clock not the entire tower, Westminster Abbey, which is gorgeous both inside and out, we went to the Towers and saw the royal jewels... what I wouldn't give for some of those!!! Then we went to Tower Bridge and walked over that... saw the London Eye several times and by the time we knew it, it was time to go and meet up with the family Fridg knew.

We had a great dinner and it was such a great time and we're talking and talking and they drove us into Richmond which was a stop that would allow us to take a faster way into Paddington... which would have been great if the trip from Waterloo to Paddington wasn't so long. We missed our train from Paddington to Worcester by 2 minutes. The trains in London are never late, unless it says delayed on the display board and of course when we're leaving they're not delayed only when we're going! Hah. But not to worry, we were able to go back to the Martin's (Fridg's family) and stay the night there... though by the time we got back there it was after 11 p.m. and our plan for the next morning was to leave at 4:40 a.m. from Teddington, to catch the train to Waterloo, then we could get from Waterloo to Paddington taking a faster route than we had the day before... and we would catch the 6:52 a.m. train from Paddington to Worcester. Which we did... of course we only got about 3 or 4 hours of sleep, but it was quite alright. It was an exciting trip and makes for an interesting story about my first time into London! It was beautiful and exciting and I can't wait to go back, because a day was just not enough... there are so many places that we didn't get to go and didn't get to see though we walked well over 10 miles that day. So I am definitely looking forward to my next time back in London. As I said these are not all my photo's. But I will put as many as possible up, beginning with the snow then moving onto the London ones.