Spring Break: LONDON

YAY LONDON!!! It was soooo nice to hear English again...even if it was a strange and snooty version of English that actually took some time to get used to so that we could understand it. But being in London was almost almost like being home again...

They had actual hearty meals again...(even though they call them "patsies" which I thought very strange...these people run around saying "I want a patsy" why not say "meat pie" it sounds so much less retarded than "patsy") This was a cottage pie with a meat and vegetable gravy with mashed potatoes and cheese on top. yumMY!

and Starbucks... (there were Starbucks on literally every corner, sometimes there were more than one on a block...it was crazy)

...they even had a waffle house!!! (although they clearly do not have the right idea because the place was clean and not at all sketchy...we were very disappointed).

But England was very lovely, it was actually really really clean...I'd always envisioned a smoggy soot filled city (probably an impression I've gotten from history classes where they talk about England in the industrial revolution or something). But compared to Italy England was immaculate, and there were no beggars camping out everywhere and pestering you pitifully on the streets.

We stayed on a street that looked very similar to this one (streets like this were everywhere). Rows and rows of the same house repeated over and over again in the same color and everything. But it was really very pretty.

Our shady hostel room...we were in a five person mixed bedroom (mixed meaning boys and girls). SOOOO SKETCHY (excuse me "dodgy"...those Brits have got some straaaange words). We were kinda (ok really) nervous the first night there...

...so we shoved this closet-like thing in front of the door. The thing probably weighed like maybe a pound because it was made of some sort of foam-core material but we figured it would make some noise or something if someone was trying to break in.

They had some pretty cool buildings, though... this was their city hall.

The London Tower bridge

holy CRAP these people stunk! I was seriously gagging...

Probably why the streets were so clean...this guy was vacuuming up bits of trash on the street.

The Peter Pan statue...the story on the tour bus said that Mr. Barrie (creator of Peter Pan) had the statue made and then placed in Hyde Park in the middle of the night so that children who walked through the park on their way to school saw the statue the next morning and thought that it appeared magically.

HAHAHA...this was a hippie peace rally or something. These people had been here for so long they had killed the grass with their tents. Anyways, it made me laugh...

Westminster...this place was not what I was expecting. We've been visiting churches all semester but this was without a doubt the most cluttered place I've been in yet. If you think about how many famous kings, queen, scientists, poets, and writers are supposed to be buried there...well they're all really there. There were sarcophagus and coffins and statues and plaques everywhere...I mean EVERYWHERE. I don't see how they even know who all is buried there...there are bodies in the floors, in the walls, in marble tombs in chapels, and in the hallways...it was crazy! Quite literally a cache of tombs. I guess I was expecting to see a large graveyard (especially considering how many people I've heard are buried there) but they're all inside the church!

British taxies

British guards (it's quite odd to see cops walking around with these massive machine guns...a little unnerving too. But they do this all over Europe.)

London had lots of cool pubs and bars and stores with these strange names...


"bag o' nails" (whaaaat?)

"the high and mighty" (oh puleeeese!)

the Globe theatre...

Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guards...really not the spectacle I was expecting. They had all these weapons and they didn't twirl or throw any of them! They just marched in and played some songs and not even good songs either...they opened with "that's the way (uh-huh uh-huh) I like it." From what I hear, I think the Citadel cadets could take them on any day. AND you know how you always see these pictures of people trying to get the guards to move and stuff, well you can't even do that because they keep their little soldiers locked away behind those big gates the whole time...very disappointing.

The grounds were really beautiful, though.

Oh la la...the Ritz, baby!!!

Riding around on the Big Bus tour...it was a really good way to see the city.

The RE Swiss building (or St. Mary's Cross)...it took us forever to actually find this thing...we kept seeing glimpses of it in gaps of the skyline and reflected on other buildings but we really could not find the actual building (well obviously we did eventually find it, but it was very frustrating).

Yay for Spring!!!

The House of Parliament and Big Ben.

Big ol' Ben

Hyde park and "Speaker's corner." Apparently speaker's corner is where you can go to just rant about whatever you want and the crowd is encourage (actually expected) to heckle the speakers. Sounds like a good time...we saw this crowd and planned to come back when we had more time to watch what was going on but the next day we found out that they only do it on Sundays and "Bank holidays" so we didn't get a chance to check it out.

All the tons of chimneys on the tops of the buildings...apparantly each room in the house used to have a fireplace and a flue, hence the smog that I was expecting. However, most of these chimneys are not used now and so the pollution is not nearly as bad as it was.